The results showed that all of the ZnO NRs that were prepared using different solvents exhibited strong excitonic absorption peaks at 378 nm. These peaks indicated that the grown ZnO NRs possessed good optical quality and large exciton binding energy. Figure 6 Optical transmittance spectra of hydrothermal derived ZnO NRs. The absorption coefficient (α) for the direct transition of the ZnO NRs was studied using Equation 4 [43]: (4) where T
is the transmittance of the ZnO films, and d is the film thickness. The optical bandgap (αhv) dependence on the absorption coefficient (α) over the energy range of 3 to 3.5 eV at RT was calculated using the following relation [44]: (5) where hv is the photon energy, B is the constant, E g is the bandgap energy, and n is the allowed direct band with the value of ½. The direct bandgap energies for the different solvents used were determined by plotting the corresponding Tauc graphs, that is, (αhv)2 buy CHIR98014 versus hv curves. This method was used to measure the energy difference between the valence and conduction bands. The direct bandgap of the ZnO films
was the interception between the tangent to the linear portion of the curve and the hv-axis (Figure 7). The optical bandgaps determined from the curves are summarized in Table 3. The results indicated that the ZnO NRs that were grown with 2-ME for the seed layer preparation showed the highest bandgap (3.21 eV), whereas those grown with the IPA exhibited the lowest bandgap (3.18 eV), which is believed to possess a better conductivity. According to the CDK inhibitor corresponding bandgap energy
(E g) and absorption band edge (λ) of the bulk ZnO, that is, 367 nm and 3.36 eV, respectively [45], the as-grown ZnO NRs possessed a significantly lower bandgap or exhibited a redshift of E g from 0.15 to 0.18 eV. This shift can be attributed to the optical confinement effect of the formation of ZnO NRs [46] and the size of the ZnO NRs [47]. Figure 7 Plot of ( α hv) 2 versus the photon energy for different solvent derived ZnO thin films. Table 3 Direct bandgap, calculated Selleckchem Danusertib refractive indices of ZnO NRs corresponding to optical dielectric constant Solvent Bandgap (eV) Refractive index ( n) Optical constant (Ɛ ∞ ) MeOH 3.20 3.28a 3.25b 2.064i 2.290j 2.329k 4.260i 5.246j 5.426k EtOH 3.19 Thalidomide 3.31c 3.10d 2.070i 2.293j 2.331k 4.286i 5.259j 5.436k IPA 3.18 3.29e 3.27f 2.076i 2.296j 2.334k 4.311i 5.272j 5.445k 2-ME 3.21 3.28g 3.39h 2.058i 2.288j 2.327k 4.235i 5.233j 5.417k aYi et al. [64]. bCao et al. [58]. cKarami et al. [59]. dGowthaman et al. [60]. eShakti et al. [61]. fMejía-García et al. [62]. gKashif et al. [23]. hAbdullah et al. [63]. iRavindra et al. [51]. jHerve and Vandamme [52]. kGhosh et al. [53]. Many attempts have been made to relate the refractive index (n) and E g through simple relationships [48–51]. However, these relationships of n are independent of the temperature and incident photon energy.