Facile synthesis of cerium and vanadium doped nickel oxide nanoparticles for the enhancement of optical, electrical and thermoelectric properties

•Sol-gel method was used for the synthesis of pristine, cerium and vanadium doped nio-nps.•White egg yolks was used as a stabilizing agent for the synthesis of NiO NPs.•The UV–VIS analysis shows that band gap decreased 3.52 to 3.30 eV with doping agent.•It was observe that resistivity decreased of doped NiO–NPs and conductivity increased.•Seebeck coefficient was increased by increasing temperature upto significant level of v doped NiO NPs. To investigate the optical, electrical and thermoelectric properties of pristine, cerium and vanadium doped NiONPs was synthesized by using sol-gel method. The XRD was used to investigate the FCC cubic crystal structure and crystallite size decreased from 75 to 43 nm. However, SEM micrographs depicted irregular surface morphology changed into small agglomerated grains by vanadium doped NiO–NPs. After that the EDAX analysis was performed to obtain the elemental composition (Ni, O, Ce and V) and also identified the weight percent of each element in all samples. The different functional groups such as NiO, OH, CO, CO2, CC and VO was examined by FTIR spectra. The absorbance peak of pristine and doped NiO NPs indicate the blue shift and band gap decreased from 3.52 to 3.30 eV was calculated by UV-VIS analysis. The electrical properties were examined with two probe method and draw the relation between resistivity and conductivity. It was observed that the resistivity decreased (6 × 103 to 2 × 103 ohm-cm) with Ce and V doped NiONPs and conductivity increased (2 × 10–5 to 6 × 10–3 S/cm). Further, seebeck coefficient was calculated with the help of thermoelectric analysis and it was observed that seebeck coefficient increased by increasing temperature upto significant level. Overall analyses shows that vanadium doped NiONPs are excellent candidate for optical, electrical and thermoelectric measurements. While as prepared cerium and vanadium doped NiONPs will be helpful of electrical and thermoelectric devices.