Composition, morphology, and structure of ultrafine ZnS-ZnO powders alloyes with transition metal oxides

Ultrafine ZnO–ZnS powders with additions of d-metal oxides additions, namely, V2O5, MnO, Fe2O3, CoO, NiO, CuO are studied. The alloying the ZnO–ZnS system with d-metals changes the morphology of the synthesized powders. The particle size distribution obeys the lognormal law. The addition of d-metal oxide upon the synthesis of ZnO–ZnS composites shifts the maximum of the particle-size distribution to the larger sizes. The most probable particle size for samples alloyed with iron and cobalt (530 nm) exceeds that of unalloyed sample (320 nm) by more than 1.6 times. All the synthesized samples are found to be characterized by excess oxygen. The zinc, sulfur and oxygen contents in the unalloyed ZnO–ZnS compositions is 48.0, 12.8 and 39.2 at%, respectively. The synthesis of the ZnO–ZnS composition together with transition metal oxides does not change the hexagonal and cubic symmetry of the sulfide and hexagonal symmetry of zinc oxide. The presence of iron leads to an increase in the coherent domain size of the cubic ZnS phase.