The 2012 World Congress on Advances in Civil, Environmental, and Materials Research (ACEM’ 12) Seoul, Korea, August 26-30, 2012 Synthesis and Characterization of Structural, Electrical and Magnetic Properties of NiO Nanocrystallites Muhammad Javid, Shahid Atiq 1),* and Shahzad Naseem Centre of Excellence in Solid State Physics, University of the Punjab, Lahore-54590, Pakistan 1) E-mail: shahidatiqpasrur@yahoo.com ABSTRACT Many materials exhibit unique properties when reduced to nano-scale, mainly due to increased surface to volume ratio. These unique properties enable nano- materials to be more beneficial from application view point. Nickel oxide has emerged as a classic example of a class of nano-materials whose structural, electrical and magnetic properties are of great interest. In the present study, we mainly focus on the preparation of nickel oxide nano-crystallites by a novel low cost sol-gel auto-combustion technique. Owing to the importance of fuel reagents in this material’s synthesis method, various molar concentrations of citric acid have been employed to achieve the phase pure samples. X-ray diffraction revealed that prepared sample consisted of nickel oxide without any impurity. Sherer’s formula confirmed that the nickel oxide samples consisted of crystallites in the nano-meter range. Dielectric and magnetic properties were investigated using LCR meter and vibrating sample magnetometer, respectively. 1. INTRODUCTION Rapid development in the field of nanotechnology greatly depends upon the leading edge of nano-materials (Murray 2000). Quite often, exciting properties are emerged when particle size is reduced to nanometer scale, corresponding to their bulk counterparts. Metal oxide nanocrystalline materials exhibit fascinating properties and have established their importance as gas-sensors (Poulston et al. 2005), solar cells (Bandara and Yasomanee 2007), fuel cells (Levy 1997) and electrodes (Liao 2006). NiO nanostructures bear a wide range of applications having a p-type semiconducting properties and with a stable wide band gap of 3.6 to 4.0 eV. It has also been used as a transparent p-type semiconductor layer (Meybodi 2012). In addition, NiO shows anodic electrochromism and finds its applications in smart windows, dye-sensitized photocathodes and electrochemical super-capacitors (Qiao 2009). These functional properties depend mainly upon the surface morphology, matric-pore interface and the porosity. Nanocrystalline powers of NiO have been synthesized by various techniques such as chemical precipitation (Bahadur 2008), microwave assisted techniques (Mohammadyani 2009), anodic arc plasma method (Qiao 2009) and sonochemical methods (Aslani 2010). Sol-gel auto-combustion has recently emerged as a promising route to prepare oxide nanocrystalline powders in a phase pure form. Therefore, in the present study, we have employed this novel technique for the preparation of NiO nanocrytallites, in order to explore their electric and magnetic properties.