Effect Of Annealing Temperature On Structural And Optical Properties Of Zntio3 Perovskite Layers Deposited On Silicon For Photocatalytic Applications

In this paper, we investigate the effect of annealing temperature on structural, optical, and photocatalytic properties of nanostructured ZnTiO3 thin films deposited on Si substrates. ZnTiO3 coatings were prepared by consecutive sol-gel method and further deposited on Si substrates by spin-coating. The obtained films were annealed at three various temperatures namely 700 degrees C, 800 degrees C, and 900 degrees C. X-ray diffraction analysis shows that the crystallite size of the films grows from 100 to 125 nm as the annealing temperature increases from 700 to 900 degrees C. At the same time, the roughness increases from 232 to 289 nm and the band gap dwindles from 3.73 to 3.05 eV. ZnTiO3 coatings annealed at 700 degrees C exhibits the highest photodegradation rate about 74 % to catalyze the degradation of the Methylene Blue aqueous solution. We demonstrate that this high photocatalytic activity is attributed to the structural and optical properties of prepared samples.