Morphological and optical investigation of Y2O3:SiO2 powder by wet chemical process

• Wet chemical synthesis route is discussed to obtain Y2O3:SiO2 nanocomposite.
• Structural investigation is carried out by FTIR, SEM and TEM.
• Absorption spectra, band gap energy and photoluminescence are investigated.

Nanocrystalline yttrium oxide–silica has been successfully synthesized by wet chemical process. Y (NO3)3·4H2O and TEOS were used as precursors and obtained powdered form of Y2O3:SiO2 binary oxide. The powdered samples were annealed at 250 °C and 500 °C temperature and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), UV–Vis spectroscopy, Photoluminescence (PL) and Transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The XRD results predicted that the as-prepared sample has mixed phase of Y(NO3)(OH)3 and Si(OH)2. However, cubic yttrium oxide phase alone is found for annealed sample with average grain size ∼8 nm at 500 °C (6 h). Sample analyzed by FTIR and TEM confirmed the grain size dependency on sintering temperature. From the UV–Vis spectra, it is found that the position of the absorption peak is shifted towards the lower wavelength side with sintering temperature. In the PL spectra, the broad emission band is centered at 585 nm.