Chemical bath deposition approach to produce three different morphologies of PbO thin films from different cation concentrations

Abstract

In this work, a facile chemical bath deposition process was used to prepare nanorods, nanosheets, and cauliflower PbO thin films from various cation molar concentrations. After being prepared at different molar concentrations, the as-deposited PbO thin films were annealed in a furnace at 400 °C. Subsequently, the PbO thin films were characterized using a variety of techniques. The XRD result demonstrates the presence of the β-PbO and α-PbO phases, with the β-PbO phase predominating. The average crystallite size of PbO thin film deposited at 0.1 M, 0.15 M, 0.2 M, and 0.25 M molar concentrations was 36.51 nm, 41.22 nm, 37.28 nm, and 40.38 nm, respectively. The UV–Vis spectroscopy result indicated that the optical bandgap of PbO thin films increased from 3.14 to 3. 81 eV as the lead molar concentrations varied from 0.1 to 0.25 M. The strong green emission band at the 523 nm region was shown by the PL spectroscopy. The coexistence of hexagonal nanorods, cauliflower, and networked nanosheet structures coated on the substrate’s surface is confirmed by the SEM surface morphology analysis. The existence of both Pb and O elements is confirmed by EDX analysis.