Morphology and Optical Studies of (<i>1-x</i>)ZnAl<sub>2</sub>O<sub>4</sub> – <i>x</i>SiO<sub>2</sub> Thin Films Prepared by Sol-Gel Method

The effect of morphological structures and optical band gap of ( 1-x )ZnAl 2 O 4 x SiO 2 samples with compositions of x = 0.00, 0.05, 0.10 and 0.15 were prepared by sol-gel method. Spin coating technique was used to deposited the ( 1-x )ZnAl 2 O 4 x SiO 2 as a thin film and to investigate the structural and optical band gap. The produced thin film samples were annealed at 450 °C for 1h. Field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) was used to investigate the surface morphology of the samples. The average particle size for ( 1-x )ZnAl 2 O 4 x SiO 2 is about 331.23 nm. The particle size are tend to increase as the composition of SiO 2 increased. XRD analysis shows the formation of cubic structure phase and dominant peak has been observed with Miller Indices (311) plane. The average crystallite size, D was calculated with average size about 8 13 nm. The optical band gap was calculated for ( 1-x )ZnAl 2 O 4 x SiO 2 samples and it was found within range of 3.34 to 3.94 eV.