Luminescence and electrical behavior of lead molybdate nanoparticles

Abstract

We report our investigation on photoluminescence and electrical behavior of lead molybdate (PbMoO4) nanoparticles by spanning the solvent of reaction medium. The PbMoO4 nanoparticles were prepared in different solvents like ethylene glycol (EG), dimethyl sulfonic acid (DMSO) and 50% EG + 50% DMSO at room temperature. The crystallite size and strain acting on nanoparticles were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) study and microstructure was studied by transmission electron microscope (TEM). The average crystallite sizes and strain were found to be ∼22, 24 and 25 nm and ∼0.0028, 0.0039 and 0.0048 for EG, DMSO and EG+DMSO solvents, respectively. The XRD peak corresponding to (112) were found to shift to lower angle by 0.02° for DMSA solvent as compared to EG. This confirmed the lattice expansion in the unit cell. The particle sizes measured from TEM measurements were found to be slightly greater than that obtained from XRD analysis. The photoluminescence (PL) measurements were carried out by using 266 nm Nd-YAG laser excitation (Mo-O CTB). The samples depicted strong BLUE color. The order of emission intensity in the samples was obtained in EG+DMSO > DMSO > EG order. This may be related to the formation of [MoO4] and [PbO 8] clusters in PbMoO4 host. The electrical conductivity study were carried out for these samples and from this study, we concluded that the conduction mechanism in this system were polaronic in nature. © 2013 American Institute of Physics.