Investigation of optical properties and chemical structure of Nd2O3 nanoparticles deposited on NaX zeolite powder using plasma focus device

Abstract

Abstract In this study, nanoparticles of neodymium oxide were deposited on NaX zeolite powder using a 5.3 kJ Mather‒type plasma focus device. The NaX zeolite samples were exposed to the 10, 15, and 20 shot numbers of the plasma focus device at a distance of 14 cm from the anode tip and 0 angular positions with respect to the anode axis. Parent NaX zeolite and NaX:Nd composites with different Nd2O3 percent weights were characterized using different techniques such as; XRF, XRD, SEM, FT‒IR, and UV‒vis. It was shown that the amount of Nd2O3 in the samples increases with increase of the shot number. It was also found from the results that variations in amount of Nd2O3 can have significant effects on the degree of the crystallinity and optical properties of final products such as refractive index, band gap energy, dielectric constant, and absorption coefficients.