Structural and optical characterization of potassium doped zinc oxide nanosheets

•Potassium doped ZnO nanosheets are reported for the first time.•The synthesis was carried out by simple chemical method.•The synthesized nano sheets can be used for the fabrication of optoelectronic devices.

This paper presents the synthesis of potassium (K) doped zinc oxide nano sheets at room temperature by wet chemical method. The structure and morphology of the crystals prepared for different molar concentrations of K were analysed by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Lattice strain and grain size were calculated from the Williamson–Hall (WH) Plot and Debye–Scherrer’s formula for different concentrations of potassium. Absorption studies reveal that absorption is minimum in the visible region and band gap energy is found to decrease with increase in K concentration. The photoluminescence (PL) spectra were used to study the luminescence behavior and the nature of defects in the samples and the overall emission is white for all the samples except the one prepared with 1.2 M potassium doping.