ROLE OF SALT PRECURSOR IN THE SYNTHESIS OF ZINC OXIDE NANOPARTICLES

Abstract

In this paper, Zinc oxide nanoparticles having wurtzite crystalline structure are synthesized. The temperature, base concentration and the salt precursor used for the synthesis affects the morphology and particle size. The synthesized nanoparticles are characterized by X-ray diffraction, Scanning electron microscopy and Diffused reflectance UV-visible spectroscopy. As the temperature is increased from 800 C to 1000C, keeping the concentration of the base viz sodium hydroxide at 5M, the particle size increases from 30nm to 500nm. With change in base concentration from 2M to 10M, at constant reaction temperature of 800C, the particle size increases from 30 nm to 500 nm. Herein the precursor used is zinc chloride. The effect of salt precursor is studied for three different salt precursors, viz. zinc chloride, zinc nitrate and zinc acetate. This paper is an attempt to give the information about salt precursor to be used, optimum values of temperature and base concentration for synthesis of the ZnO nanoparticles with enhanced antibacterial property for suitable biomedical application.