Author: Ghule, L..A.
Paper Title Page
THP020 Effects of 6 MeV Electron Irradiation on ZnO Nanoparticles Synthesized by Microwave Method 2166
 
  • K.B. Sapnar, V.N. Bhoraskar, S.D. Dhole
    University of Pune, Pune, India
  • K.M. Garadkar, L..A. Ghule
    Shivaji University, Nanomaterials Reasearch Laboratory, Kolhapur, India
 
  The sizes of zinc-oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles were synthesized by microwave method and were tailored by electron irradiation method. The ZnO nanoparticles having size of ~46 nm synthesised by microwave method were exposed to different fluences of 6 MeV electrons over the range from 1x1015 to 2.5x1015 e- /cm2. The electron irradiated ZnO nanoparticles were characterized by XRD, SEM, UV techniques. The XRD results show that the particle size reduced continuously from 46 nm to 15 nm with the increase in electron fluence and SEM images also confirms the formation of nanoparticles of minimum size of around 14 nm. The band gap of the ZnO nanoparticle also increased from 3.29 to 3.42 eV as the size reduced. The result shows the ZnO particles are broken in to smaller size under electron irradiation and increase in the band gap indicates the formation of defects in ZnO. The electron irradiation method is found to be an efficient method in tailoring the size of ZnO nano particles. The nanosized ZnO particles can suit for the applications such as photovoltaics, photocells and antimicrobial activity.