Regular Article

Synthesis and optical analyses of fluorine doped tin oxide (SnO₂) nanoparticles

¹ Renewable Energy and Oxide Hybrid Systems Laboratory, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Istanbul University, Vezneciler, Istanbul, Turkey
² Istanbul University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Basic Medical Sciences, Vezneciler, Istanbul, Turkey
³ Kanagawa Industrial Technology Center, Kanagawa Prefectural Government, Ebina 236-0435, Japan
⁴ National Cheng Kung University Tainan City 701, Taiwan

^* e-mail: musa.can@istanbul.edu.tr

Received: 8 February 2021
Received in final form: 1 May 2021
Accepted: 13 July 2021
Published online: 16 August 2021

Abstract

The study was focused on to synthesis of pure and fluorine-doped SnO₂ (FTO) nanoparticles by sol-gel method combining with low temperature, 300 °C, annealing process, immediately after gelation. The relationship between the structural and optical properties of FTO was investigated to understand the effects of fluorine amount on the optical transmittance ratio and configuration of electronic energy levels. Homogeneous distribution of fluorine in SnO₂ lattice was observed at all synthesized FTO powders. In addition, the change in electronic energy configuration was investigated by the fluctuation from 3.85 eV to 3.64 eV in band gap energy values according to the amount of fluorine in SnO₂. The optical transmittance values were observed in the range of ∼90% and 95%. Optical analysis proved that the amount of fluorine had no specific effect on the high optical transmittance performances of SnO₂ particles in the visible region, however the F amount had high impact on band gap energy values due to due to varying defect intensity.