Studies on structural and optical properties of pure and transition metals (Ni, Fe and co-doped Ni–Fe) doped tin oxide (SnO2) nanoparticles for anti-microbial activity

• DOI: 10.1007/s11164-018-03713-z
• Publication Date: 2019-01-04T23:10:03Z
• Authors: T. Amutha; M. Rameshbabu; S. Sasi Florence; N. Senthilkumar; I. Vetha Potheher; K. Prabha
• Keywords: 02 engineering and technology; 0210 nano-technology; 01 natural sciences; 0104 chemical sciences

In this present work, pure and transition metal ions (Ni, Fe and co-doped Ni–Fe) doped SnO2 nanoparticles (NPs) were synthesized using a simple chemical co-precipitation method. Transition metal ions (Ni, Fe and co-doped Ni–Fe) were doped in order to study the influence of structural and optical properties. The synthesized samples were analyzed by using powder X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray analysis, UV–Visible spectroscopy, FT-IR, and photoluminescence spectroscopic techniques. SnO2 crystallites were found to exhibit tetragonal rutile structure with space group P42/mnm (136) with average particle size in the range of 20–30 nm. Also confirmed that all the doped metal ions were incorporated to SnO2. The UV–Vis-NIR spectroscopy revealed a significant red shift in the absorbing band edge due to increase in the amount of Ni, Fe and co-doped Ni–Fe contents. The SEM image shows the morphology of pure and doped (Fe, Ni and Fe–Ni co-doped) SnO2 NPs with large spherical shapes. In FT-IR spectra, the strong peaks are attributed to the antisymmetric stretching mode of O-Sn-O. The PL spectrum exhibits a strong blue emission peak. The antimicrobial studies were investigated against standard bacterial strains and enhanced anti-bacterial activity in doped and co-doped samples was observed, which can be attributed to the ROS and the particles were in the nanoscale regime.