Structural and Optical Properties of LaFeO3 Doped Sodium Bismuth Titanate Nanoparticles

Nanoparticles of xLaFeO(3)-(1-x)Na0.5Bi0.5TiO3, x = 0, 0.01, 0.03, 0.05 were synthesized by sol gel method. The prepared samples were subjected to structural and optical analysis via XRD, Raman spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) and UV-Vis spectroscopy. XRD analysis shows that the samples show proper phase formation without any impurity. A change in the shift of peaks is seen with addition of dopants, predicting changes occurring in the samples. The crystalline size calculated using Debye Scherrer formula is found to be in the range of 20-35 nm. The shift in the Raman bands also indicates the structural changes occurring in the samples due to the introduction of LaFeO3 in NBT matrix. FTIR shows different stretching and bending modes of the functional groups. Reflectance data is provided by UV- Visible spectroscopy and the Optical band gap calculated using Kubelka-Munk function estimates that band gap is minimum i.e., E-g = 2.78 eV for x=0.03.