Synthesis of Single Phase Tin(II) Oxide Nanoparticles by Microwave-Assisted Hydrothermal Technique

This paper presents a novel microwave-assisted hydrothermal technique for synthesizing tin(II) oxide nanoparticles. This technique can be used for producing large quantities of homogeneous nanoparticles in a short time. The effect of the solution molarity, final pH, hydrothermal processing time and microwave power were studied. The tin(II) oxide structure verified from XRD and the mean crystallite size was evaluated to be about 5 nm using the Debye-Scherrer formula on the most intense peak. The particle size was measured from STM pictures in the range between 4-5 nm. For different samples, UV-Vis spectroscopy showed the absorption peak due to tin(II) oxide at about 240 nm and an exitonian peak at about 280 nm that shifted with respect to solution molarity, final pH, hydrothermal processing time and microwave power. The photoluminescence spectroscopy (PL) results showed the emission peaks in the visible spectrum range. The results showed that synthesized SnO nanoparticles have a direct band gap equal to about 2.5 eV, an Urbach energy of about 2.7 eV and activation energy of 47.75 kJ/mol.