Effect of nickel doping on structural and optical properties of ZnS nanoparticles

• Ni-doped ZnS thin films have been prepared by chemical precipitation method.
• XRD patterns show that the Ni-doped ZnS films exhibit hexagonal structure.
• The grain size of Ni-doped ZnS is higher than that of ZnS.

In the present work, solution based simple chemical precipitation method has been used to prepare undoped and Ni-doped ZnS nanoparticles. Zinc acetate, sodium sulfide, and nickel nitrate have been used as precursors for the preparation of Ni-doped ZnS nanoparticles. The X-ray diffraction results revealed that the undoped and Ni-doped ZnS nanoparticles exhibit hexagonal Structure. The average grain size of the prepared nanoparticles was found to lie in the range of 2.6–4.2 nm. The SEM images show that the particles have smooth surface and the formation of agglomerated nanoparticles. The compositional analysis results confirm the presence of Ni, Zn and S in the prepared samples. The optical properties of undoped and Ni-doped ZnS quantum dots have been studied using absorption spectra. HRTEM results show that undoped and Ni-doped ZnS nanoparticles exhibit a uniform size distribution with average grain size lying in the range of 2.3–3.6 nm. The synthesized nanoparticles exhibited an emission peak centered at around 612 nm in the PL spectrum.