Structural optical correlated properties of SnO2/Al2O3 core@ shell heterostructure

Nano size polycrystalline samples of the core@shell heterostructure of SnO2 @ xAl2O3 (x = 0, 25, 50, 75 wt.%) were synthesized by sol-gel technique. The resulting samples were characterized with fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), photoluminescence (PL) and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD). The XRD patterns manifest diffraction peaks of SnO2 as main phase with weak peaks corresponding to Al2O3 phase. The formation of core@ shell structure is confirmed by TEM images and Rietveld quantitative phase analysis which revealed that small part of Al2O3 is incorporated into the SnO2 lattice while the main part (shell) remains as a separate phase segregated on the grain boundary surface of SnO2 (core). It is found that the grain size of the mixed oxides SnO2 @ xAl2O3 is below 10 nm while for pure SnO2 it is over 41 nm, indicating that alumina can effectively prevent SnO2 from further growing up in the process of calcination. This is confirmed by the large increase in the specific surface area for mixed oxide samples. The PL emission showed great dependence on the structure properties analyzed by XRD and FTIR. The PL results recommend Al2O3@SnO2 core@shell heterostructure to be a promising short-wavelength luminescent optoelectronic devices for blue, UV, and laser light-emitting diodes.