Synthesis and characterization of aluminium doped Zinc Oxide by hydrothermal method

Zinc Oxide (ZnO) is a very promising material for semiconductor device and has high electrical resistivity. Al doped ZnO were synthesized by hydrothermal methods in order to study the influence of Al on the growth of ZnO in terms of band gap and its physical properties. Hydrothermal method is one of the most common method for preparation of ZnO. Al were doped to ZnO of different concentrations (0, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 mol%). 1.0 mol% of Al doped ZnO showed the lower band gap and XRD were used to characterize the samples. XRD shows the phase formation of Al was successfully doped in ZnO and ZnO gave hexagonal wurtzite structure. The average crystallite structure for pure ZnO, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 mol% of Al doped ZnO is 34.59, 34.24, 31.08, 26.59, and 24.96 nm respectively. UV-Vis spectroscopy reveals the band gap of pure ZnO, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 mol% of Al which is 2.18, 2.20, 2.28, 2.46 and 2.50 eV. The analyses show that Al doped ZnO successfully synthesized via hydrothermal method and doping with Al reducing crystallite size and increasing the band gap of ZnO.