Study on the optical and electrical properties of Eu3+-doped SnO2 nanocrystals

(Arik Kar, et al. J. Phys. Chem. C, 2009, 113, 4375): In this work, we reported the fabrication of pure and Eu3+-doped SnO2 nanocrystals by microwave synthetic method. The size dependence of the band gap energies of the quantum-confined SnO2 nanoparticles agreed very well with the confinement regime. The PL intensity, decay time, and quantum efficiency are found to be sensitive to the size of the nanoparticle. The calculated quantum efficiencies are found to be 22.0, 31.0, and 26.0% for 300, 400, and 800°C heated samples, respectively. The maximum quantum efficiency was observed for 400°C heated sample due to its minimum nonradiative decay rate. We have established that the crystallite size plays an important role in tuning the quantum efficiency, emission intensity, and decay time of Eu3+-doped SnO2 nanocrystals. We have also found that the conductivity for doped sample is higher than that for pure SnO2 nanocrystals and pure SnO2 nanocrystals showed a typical rectifying behavior. I have presented an oral presentation at the Young Scientists Colloquium-2011, Kolkata Chapter held at IACS, Kolkata. (Journal I.F=4.51, Total Citation-73).

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