Fabrication and Investigation of the Structural, Morphological and Optical Properties of Iron Oxide by Thermal Evaporation Technique and Antibacterial Applications

Abstract

In this paper, thermal evaporation technique were used to prepared iron (Fe) nanofilms deposited on glass substrates. The characterization of the nanofilms by X-ray diffraction (XRD) confirmed the formation of hematite phase for crystalline tetragonal structure (γ-Fe2O3) and maghemite hexagonal crystal structure (α-Fe2O3) at annealing temperature of 200oC, 300oC and 400oC for 2 hours. The average crystallite size increased with increasing annealing temperature. Atomic force microscope (AFM) images of iron oxide nanofilms show a high surface homogeneity in which the distribution of crystalline granules is uniform. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) images showed that the assemblies of nanoparticles in the form of a flowers are spread on the nano surface, which are a candidate for energy storage applications. The optical properties results show that transmittance increase with increasing annealing temperature. The allowed direct optical energy gap (Egopt) decreased with increasing annealing temperature. The optical constants such as absorption coefficient, extinction coefficient, refractive index and real and imaginary parts of dielectric constant also were studied from the studied properties, the prepared films were suitable for optical devices and antibacterial application.