Towards control of the size, composition and surface area of nio nanostructures by sn doping

María Taeño*, David Maestre, Julio Ramírez-Castellanos, Shaohui Li, Pooi See Lee, Ana Cremades

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Citations (Scopus)

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 languageEnglish
Article number444
Pages (from-to)1-13
Number of pages13
JournalNanomaterials
Volume11
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2021
Externally publishedYes

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

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