Thermoluminescence properties of ZnO nanoparticles in the temperature range 10-300 K

Low-temperature thermoluminescence (TL) properties of ZnO nanoparticles grown by sol-gel method were investigated in the 10-300 K temperature range. TL glow curve obtained at 0.2 K/s constant heating rate exhibited one broad peak around 83 K. The observed peak was analyzed using curve fitting method to determine the activation energies of trapping center(s) responsible for glow curve. Analyses resulted in the presence of three peaks at 55, 85 and 118 K temperatures with activation energies of 12, 30 and 45 meV, respectively. Thermal cleaning process was applied to separate overlapped peaks and get an opportunity to increase the reliability of results obtained from curve fitting method. Heating rate dependence of glow curve was also studied for rates between 0.2 and 0.7 K/s. The shift of the peak maximum temperatures to higher values and decrease in peak height with heating rate were observed. Moreover, X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy were used for structural characterization.