Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Nanoscience Volume 2013, Article ID 785064, 7 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/785064 Research Article Synthesis of Silver-Doped Zinc Oxide Nanocomposite by Pulse Mode Ultrasonication and Its Characterization Studies T. Siva Vijayakumar, 1 S. Karthikeyeni, 1 S. Vasanth, 1 Arul Ganesh, 1 G. Bupesh, 2 R. Ramesh, 1 M. Manimegalai, 3 and P. Subramanian 1 1 Department of Animal Science, Bharathidasan University, Trichy 620024, India 2 Department of Virology, King’s Institute of Preventive Medicine, Guindy, Chennai 600032, India 3 Department of Zoology, Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College, Trichy 620002, India Correspondence should be addressed to P. Subramanian; subbus1952@gmail.com Received 23 April 2013; Revised 8 July 2013; Accepted 30 July 2013 Academic Editor: Oleg I. Lupan Copyright © 2013 T. Siva Vijayakumar et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Te synthesis of silver-doped zinc oxide (Ag:ZnO) nanocomposite material was achieved using a simple chemical coprecipitation method, in which 0.2 M zinc chloride and 0.001 M silver nitrate coprecipitated with 25% ammonia solution by pulse mode dispersion using ultrasonicator. Te obtained silvery white precipitate was dried overnight at 110 ∘ C in hot air oven, and the powder was collected. Te resulted Ag:ZnO nanocomposite was structurally and optically characterized using various techniques. Te X- ray difraction (XRD) pattern clearly showed the presence of crystalline Ag:ZnO particles. Further, UV-Vis spectrophotometer and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) results showed the presence of Ag:ZnO nanocomposite at specifc wavelengths. Te scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis confrm that the synthesized Ag:ZnO nanocomposite material was truncated nanorod in shape and has 48 to 226 nm size in diameter. 1. Introduction Zinc oxide (ZnO) is an important industrial material, because it has an inorganic and semiconducting material with inher- ent properties that share its structure as wurtzite [1]. ZnO nanocomposite has attracted interest because of its optical properties. Tese particles are transparent to visible light, but they absorb UV-light. ZnO has attracted intensive research efort for its unique properties and versatile applications in transparent electronics, chemical sensors, and spin electron- ics [2–8]. A variety of metal oxides like zinc oxide, titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ), and silicon dioxide (SiO 2 ) and diferent techniques such as chemical coprecipitation [9, 10], sol-gel process [11, 12] chemical vapour deposition [13], thermal decomposition [14, 15], hydrothermal synthesis [16, 17], solid- state reaction [18], spray pyrolysis [19], vapour-liquid-solid method [20], and microemulsion precipitation [21–23] have been used so far. Hingorani et al. also reported the synthesis of ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) and it was the frst study using reverse microemulsion in the early 1990s [24, 25]. Synthesis process of Ag:ZnO nanocomposite plays a key role in governing size, morphology, and its properties of nanocomposite through dispersion method (pulse mode), using ultrasonication [26]. Te main objective of synthesis is to produce particles only in nanorod structure for various toxicity and biological application studies. Tere are diferent doping agents like P [27], N [28], As [29], Li [30], Sb [31– 34], and Ag [35]. Among these, we have taken Ag as doping agent. Because the nature of Ag ions is simple link matrices, their behaviour to surface states in nanomaterials where the surfaces of are becomes prime importance as the size decreases. Te sonochemical synthesis of nanomaterial is extensively used to generate novel materials with diferent properties, because this method can produce similar trun- cated nanorods with smaller size than those reported by other methods [36–38]. Te advantages of chemical coprecipitation method through sol-gel process for preparing nanocomposite materials are to get small average particle size and narrow size distribution, homogeneity, purity, and more possibility to obtain nanorods.