Abstract
Here we are reporting the development of Gadolinium based copper oxide nanocomposites via a cost-effective low-temperature co-precipitation process. X-ray diffraction study approves the dual phase polycrystalline cubic and monoclinic structure with predominant orientations along (2 2 2) and (0 0 2) directions. A strong &sharp peak is positioned at similar to 512 cm(-1) in FT-IR is assigned to metal oxide (Cu-O/Gd-O) network terminal stretching & phonon band. Absorption study reveals strong absorption peaks for the samples prepared from pure copper (Cu) and gadolinium (Gd), however poor absorption was noticed from mixed CuO-Gd2O(3)nanocomposites.The largest and lowest energy gap values are found to be 4.03 eV and 2.44 eV for Gd and metal copper, respectively. White sponge, nanorods, nanoneedles and nanorice shaped morphology has observed from FESEM analysis. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) survey spectrum unveils the essential elements like Cu, Gd and oxygen. The peak fitting of Gd4d exhibits two major peaks at 143.6 and 155.8 eV binding energies correspond to spin orbit doublet splitting of 12.2 eV between 4d(5/2 )and 4d(3/)(2), respectively. From I-V study, we observed that the presence of CuO-Gd2O3 nanocomposites at p-Si/Al interface improved the performance of the MIS diode. The excellent opto-electronics properties of the developed photo-detectors make it suitable for future nano-electronics. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.