Abstract
Achieving nanostructures with high surface area is one of the most challenging tasks as this metric usually plays a key role in technological applications, such as energy storage, gas sensing or photocatalysis, fields in which NiO is gaining increasing attention recently. Furthermore, the advent of modern NiO-based devices can take advantage of a deeper knowledge of the doping process in NiO, and the fabrication of p-n heterojunctions. By controlling experimental conditions such as dopant concentration, reaction time, temperature or pH, NiO morphology and doping mechanisms can be modulated. In this work, undoped and Sn doped nanoparticles and NiO/SnO2 nanostructures with high surface areas were obtained as a result of Sn incorporation. We demonstrate that Sn incorporation leads to the formation of nanosticks morphology, not previously observed for undoped NiO, promoting p-n heterostructures. Consequently, a surface area value around 340 m2 /g was obtained for NiO nanoparticles with 4.7 at.% of Sn, which is nearly nine times higher than that of undoped NiO. The presence of Sn with different oxidation states and variable Ni3+ /Ni2+ ratio as a function of the Sn content were also verified by XPS, suggesting a combination of two charge compensation mechanisms (electronic and ionic) for the substitution of Ni2+ by Sn4+ . These results make Sn doped NiO nanostructures a potential candidate for a high number of technological applications, in which implementations can be achieved in the form of NiO–SnO2 p-n heterostructures.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 444 |
Pages (from-to) | 1-13 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Nanomaterials |
Volume | 11 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Feb 2021 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
ASJC Scopus Subject Areas
- General Chemical Engineering
- General Materials Science
Keywords
- Doping mechanisms
- High surface area
- Nanoparticles
- Nanosticks
- Nickel oxide