Investigation on structural, thermal, optical and sensing properties of meta-stable hexagonal MoO3 nanocrystals of one dimensional structure

Abstract

Hexagonal molybdenum oxide (h-MoO3) was synthesized by a solution based chemical precipitation technique. Analysis by X-ray diffraction (XRD) confirmed that the as-synthesized powder had a metastable hexagonal structure. The characteristic vibrational band of Mo–O was identified from Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images clearly depicted the morphology and size of h-MoO3. The morphology study showed that the product comprises one-dimensional (1D) hexagonal rods. From the electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) measurement, the elemental composition was investigated and confirmed from the characteristic peaks of molybdenum and oxygen. Thermogravimetric (TG) analysis on metastable MoO3 revealed that the hexagonal phase was stable up to 430 °C and above this temperature complete transformation into a highly stable orthorhombic phase was achieved. The optical band gap energy was estimated from the Kubelka–Munk (K–M) function and was found to be 2.99 eV. Finally, the ethanol vapor-sensing behavior was investigated and the sensing response was found to vary linearly as a function of ethanol concentration in the parts per million (ppm) range.