Preparation and characterisation of pure and Ni doped ZnO nanorods.

One-dimensional pure and Ni-doped zinc oxide nanorods (NRs) were prepared by chemical bath technique. Some physical properties like optical, morphological and structural were examined for prepared NRs. The result of X-ray diffraction XRD was exposed that the crystal structure was hexagonal for both pure and Ni-doped NRs where there is no change in the crystal system but some small shifting in diffraction angle appeared. The chemical composition and the presence of Ni atoms in the ZnO were approved by EDX test. Additionally, morphology investigation of the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is conducted and showed that the shape of prepared materials was NRs. A red shift in the absorption spectrum and band gap happened after doping with Ni where the energy gap dropped from 3.72 for ZnO to 3.5 eV for ZnO:Ni. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]