The effect of Ag dopant on MgO nanocrystallites grown by SILAR method

The undoped and silver (Ag) doped magnesium oxide (MgO) nanocrystallites were synthesized by successive ionic layer adsorption reaction (SILAR) method. MgO and Ag-doped MgO nanocrystal samples have been investigated optical, structural and morphological properties by XRD (X-ray diffraction), UV-vis spectroscopy, SEM (scanning electron microscope), XPS (X-ray photon spectroscopy) and PL (photoluminescence) measurements. XRD measurements of undoped and Ag-doped MgO nanocrystallites samples revelated that samples were the cubic structures and have planes of (200), and (220). The crystal size of the samples decreased from 22.83 nm to 14.42 nm with increasing the Ag-dopant content. It has been observed that the surface morphologies of the samples changed significantly with the amount of Ag-dopant. The bandgaps of samples were changed between 4.27 eV and 4.41 eV. PL measurements of the MgO and Ag-doped MgO nanocrystal samples in the visible region were showed three emissions which are around 380 nm (3.26 eV) in the violet region, around 456 nm in the blue region (2.72 eV) and around 535 nm in the green region (2.32 eV). It was observed that increased of defect density and decreased of crystalite size of samples with increasing of Ag-dopant amount.