The investigation of the optical and morphological properties of metal iron oxide-based Fe2O3-WO3-ZrO2 and Fe2O3-WO3 nanocomposites

Iron oxide nanocomposites Fe₂O₃-WO₃ and Fe₂O₃-WO₃-ZrO₂ were effectively synthesized in this study using the solid-state reaction technique and using Tauc plot analysis of diffuse reflectance spectroscopic data in the 350-700 nm spectral range, the bandgap energies were found to be 1.57 and 1.95 eV, respectively. The samples' strong crystallinity is confirmed by the relatively low Urbach energy values, which show little structural disorder. Additionally, the reflectance data were subjected to numerical calculations using the Kramers-Kronig method in order to evaluate optical properties such as the extinction coefficient and refractive index. According to the field-emission scanning electron microscopy findings, the majority of the grain morphologies were spherical and quasi-spherical. The presence of vibrational modes connected to metal-oxide bonding was also confirmed by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, which was used to determine the samples' purity. Using the Debye-Scherrer equation, the crystallite sizes of the Fe₂O₃-WO₃ and Fe₂O₃-WO₃-ZrO₂ nanocomposites were determined 33.51 nm and 32.59 nm, respectively and all samples containing WO₃ and ZrO₂ had a monoclinic phase.