Journal of Basic and Applied Engineering Research p-ISSN: 2350-0077; e-ISSN: 2350-0255; Volume 4, Issue 3; April-June, 2017, pp. 299-301 © Krishi Sanskriti Publications http://www.krishisanskriti.org/Publication.html Effect of Aliovalent Substitution on sol-gel Derived SnO 2 Nanoparticles Monika Duhan 1 , H. Kaur 2 , Anita Gupta 3 , Sanjeev Kumar 4 , Naveen Kumar 5 1,3 Amity Institute of Applied Sciences, Amity University, Sector-125, Noida-201303, India 2 PEC University of Technology, Department of Applied Sciences, Chandigarh-160012, India 4 PEC University of Technology, Department of applied sciences, Chandigarh-160012, India 5 PEC University of Technology, Department of applied sciences, Chandigarh-160012, India E-mail: 1 monikaduhan34@gmail.com, 2 hkaur@pec.ac.in, 3 agupta3@amity.edu 4 sanjeev04101977@gmail.com, 5 naveensethi99@gmail.com Abstract—Nano-crystalline metal oxides have drawn attention due to their exceptionally brilliant properties due to large surface area, small grain size, quantum confinement effect etc. which varies with the size and shape of metal oxide. Lanthanum doped tin oxide nanoparticles and lanthanum and zinc co-doped tin oxide nanoparticles were successfully synthesized by sol gel method. The precursor materials used were tin tetrachloride, lanthanum nitrate, zinc nitrate, and ethylene glycol. Nanoparticles formed from this method were calcined at 600⁰C/2h to get the crystalline powder. Using XRD pattern, the average crystalline size of metal doped tin oxide nanoparticles were determined and compared with tin oxide nanoparticles. UV-VISIBLE absorption spectrum was recorded and found the absorption of sample at a particular wavelength value. One of the most fascinating and useful aspects of nanomaterial’s is their optical properties. Applications based on optical properties of nanomaterial’s include optical detector, laser, sensor, imaging, phosphor, display, solar cell, photo catalysis, photo electrochemistry and biomedicine. With the SnO 2 semiconductor nanoparticles, a simple change in size alters the optical properties of the nanoparticles.PL emission spectra were recorded for the pure SnO 2 , La doped SnO 2 , La-Zn doped SnO 2 samples. A dominant PL peak was observed at 685nm in these samples. Keywords: Metal oxides nanoparticles, structural refinement, optical properties. 1. INTRODUCTION Metal oxide semiconductors (MOS) have become a potential member emerging technologies. In recent times, SnO 2 represents a key aspect of technological application because it exhibit interesting optical, electronic, optoelectronic and biological characteristics [1]. SnO 2 conform n-type semiconducting behavior to wide energy band gap ~3.6eV[2, 3]. SnO 2 attains several crystal structure rutile (P42/mnm), pyrite-type (Pa3), CaCl2-type (Pnnm),a-PbO2-type (Pbcn), fluorite-type (Fm3m) [4-8]. But the most stable phase at room temperature is cassiterite tetragonal rutile phase. The simultaneous appearance of conductivity and transparency becomes a unique feature of SnO 2 , amongst the Group IV elements of the periodic table. In nanomaterial’s, high surface area to volume ratio is measure of number of atoms appear on the surface i.e. more reactive sites are present on the surface. The dual valence state of Sn governs the surface properties which facilitates the transition of the compositions and changes Sn 4+ to Sn 2+ depending upon the chemical potential of oxygen [9]. The oxygen vacancies concentration is difficult to control due to dual valency of Sn in non-stoichiometric pure SnO 2 . Many reports are available on conductivity of the thin films of modified SnO 2 [10-12]. In optoelectronic devices, the concentration of doped SnO 2 carriers is nearly 10 20 cm -3 . The optical activity alters the light constants from near infrared to visible region at these carrier concentrations [13, 14]. To introduce electron degeneracy the doping mechanism is adopted. It is well established that group V increases the conductivity and group III decrease the conductivity of SnO 2 . The optimum dopant concentration lies in a range of 0.4% to 3% as it decreases the resistivity initially but increase with higher doping concentration [15]. Kilic et al. reported the first principal calculation study on transparent conductivity of SnO 2 and they have calculated the formation of energies and electrical properties with different levels of defects like oxygen interstitials, oxygen vacancies, Sn antisites and Sn interstitials [16]. In this report, we have carried out the structural and photoluminescence studies of pure and aliovalent substituted SnO 2 solgel derived nanoparticles. 2. EXPERIMENTAL The un-doped and co-doped tin oxide nanoparticles were synthesized by the sol gel method. All reagents of analytical grade were used without any further purification. Tin tetrachloride (98%) and ethylene glycol obtained from the LobaChem and lanthanum nitrate, zinc nitrate and iron nitrate chloride from the Aldrich, used as precursor materials. Solution of tin tetrachloride in ethylene glycol was prepared by dissolving appropriate amount of tin tetrachloride in ethylene glycol under vigorous stirring at 80 degree Celsius