Preparation and photoluminescence behavior of Mn-doped nano-ZnO

The Mn-doped nano-ZnO powder was successfully synthesized via co-precipitation and vacuum annealing and the scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffracton (XRD), ultraviolet visible absorption (Uv–vis) and photoluminescence (PL) of as-synthesized samples were characterized. The SEM and XRD show that the morphology of the synthesized samples was wurtzite nanosheets and nanoparticles at low doping concentration and with increasing Mn-doping concentration, mainly became to nanoparticle with a size of about 50nm. All of the ultraviolet absorption edges of Mn-doped ZnO have blue shift from Uiv-vis spectra and PL spectra show that Mn-doping significantly enhance the visible excitation band compared with pure ZnO, which indicates that Mn-doping not only produces elemental energy levels, but also affects the intrinsic defect energy levels of ZnO.