Structural, optical and electrical properties of Zr-doped In₂O₃ thin films

Novel magnetically retrievable In2O3/MoS2/Fe3O4 nanocomposite materials for enhanced photocatalytic performance

The current work involves synthesis of hybrid nanomaterial of In2O3/MoS2/Fe3O4 and their applications as photocatalysts for disintegration of esomeprazole under visible light illumination. The data emerged from various analyses testified to the successful construction of the desired nano-scaled hybrid photocatalyst. Tauc plot gave the band gap of In2O3/MoS2/Fe3O4 to be ~ 2.15 eV. Synergistic effects of the integrant components enabled efficacious photocatalytic performances of the nanocomposite. The nanohybrid photocatalyst In2O3/MoS2/Fe3O4 showed photodecomposition up to ~ 92.92% within 50 min. The current work realizes its objective of constructing metal oxide based hybrid nano-photocatalyst supported on MoS2 sheets for activity in the visible spectrum, which displayed remarkable capacity of disintegrating emerging persistent organic contaminants and are magnetically recoverable.

High Zr doping effects on the microstructural and optical properties of Mn3 O4 thin films along with ethanol sensing

Transition metal oxides as transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) films, with high optical transparency (≥82%), various valence states and p-type conductivity are used in a several physical domains. This work covers the physical study of Zr doped Mn₃O₄ semiconductor thin films using a spray pyrolysis method where Zr content varies in starting solutions from 0 to 20at.%. The impact of this work is to offer some understanding of microscopic effects of relatively high doping Zr and then correlate these effects with the macroscopic properties for interesting applications especially gas sensor. In fact, the addition of Zr ions pointed out the reduction of crystallite size (24.1 (nm)) with 20at.% doping allowing a better adsorption of gas molecules. In addition, it promotes the increase of optical gap (2.92eV) with 6at.% doping which is a useful parameter for some optical devices. X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, FTIR spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and EDAX techniques were used. It is found that these films crystallized in spinel type tetragonal hausmmanite structure. The gas sensing activity of these thin films (0, 6, 12 and 20at.% Zr) was examined with Ethanol. The performances of these last four sensing layers were compared. All the tests were performed at different working temperatures T_work=125, 150, 175 and 225°C and under two gas concentrations: 0.1% and 0.5% ethanol using dry air as carrier gas. The films exhibited noticeably ethanol sensing especially the sample doped with 6% of zirconium exhibits the most excellent sensing performance since it showed a clear response already at a low ethanol concentration of 0.1%.