Sol-gel synthesis of Tin oxide nanoparticles and their characterizations

Nanotechnology has gained great attention, because nanoparticles have tremendous properties like large surface to volume ratio, quantum confinement effects, and large reactivity. Metal oxides nanoparticles are one of the classes of nanomaterials which are of great interest in previous decades. This paper presents the synthesis and characterization of Tin oxide nanoparticles by wet chemical route method. For the preparation of Tin oxide nanoparticles, Tin tetrachloride pentahydrate and ethylene glycol were used as starting precursor materials. The synthesized powder was calcined at 600 °C to get the crystalline phase. X-ray diffraction studies revealed that SnO2 nanoparticles possessed tetragonal rutile-type crystalline phase with space group P4/2mnm with no traces of secondary phases as confirmed by Rietveld refinement technique. FTIR spectrum showed hydroxyl group (–OH) located at 3226 cm−1 and high frequency bend at 623 cm−1 belonging to Sn-O-Sn, thereby confirming the formation of SnO2 nanoparticles. Raman spectroscopy measurements are carried out to determine the structure of the synthesized nanoparticles which confirms the tetragonal phase formation of SnO2 nanoparticles. Morphological studies were carried out using field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM), which confirms the nanocrystalline nature of the particles.