Tuning the structure, optical, and magnetic properties of nanostructured NiMoO4 by nitrogen plasma treatment

Abstract

AbstractHerein, the nitrogen plasma treatment with different time irradiation (0, 90, 120, and 150 min) is used to tune the structure, optical, and magnetic properties of nanostructured NiMoO4 NMO NPs. The XRD patterns revealed that the crystallinity of NMO samples increases with an increase in the N2 plasma exposure time. The notable reduce in this peak’ intensity for the sample at dose of 120 min may be attributed to the energy dissipated in the defect generation. Also, the crystallite size for NMO samples was found in the range (23.9–26.7) nm. Further, EPR is used to evaluate the impact of the treatment duration on the oxygen vacancy density. The total number of spins rises as plasma irradiation duration increases, revealing that the NMO NPs can be used as a dosimeter for plasma irradiation. The optical bandgap ranged from 2.92 eV to 3.24 eV as the N2 plasma treatment duration changed. The saturation magnetization was enhanced with the rise of plasma treatment time. Furthermore, the Hc increases from 16.67 G for untreated NMO NPs to 128.41 G for N2 plasma-treated NMO NPs for 150 min. The resulted optical and magnetic properties of N2 plasma-treated NMO NPs make it candidate material for photocatalysis applications.