Structural and optical properties of ZnO nanocrystals

Nanocrystalline powders showed the distinguishable difference in catalytic, electrical and optical properties from macroscopic, microscopic and bulk materials. Among them, zinc oxide (ZnO) is one of the candidates that have been attracting attention because of its wide band gap energy of about 3.37 eV. In this work, ZnO nanoparticles were synthesised by chemical method using ZnSO4 x 7H2O and NaOH as reagent in molar ratio 1:4. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman Spectroscopy were used to characterize the structural, chemical features and optical properties of zinc oxide nanoparticles. The average crystalline size of the zinc oxide nanoparticles was found to be 25 nm for as prepared samples. Raman Scattering exhibits sharp and strong E2 mode peak at nearly 439 cm(-1), which confirms wurtzite structure of zinc oxide nano particles. Our study reveals that the nanoparticles if suitably modified can be useful for drug delivery.