Photocatalytic Activity of Nickel Oxide

In this work, synthesis of nickel oxide (NiO) using nickel acetate as a starting material by sol–gel method and then deposited as collide on glass slides to form thin layers of NiO by spin-coating technique with high photo-catalytic activity using as self cleaning coating. These films of NiO were annealed at different temperature 450 °C, 550 °C. The structural, morphological, spectral and optical properties of prepared NiO thin films were measured by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), Ultraviolet spectroscopy (UV-visible) respectively. These results; it was shown that the crystallinity of NiO films evolves gradually as the temperature of the annealing films increases. Depended on the (SEM) and (AFM) result in the average grain size is a range of (15–30) nm. The films achieved a higher optical transparency of thin films synthesis it was annealing at 550 °C temperature. Finally, photo-catalytic test were studies by using potassium permanganate (KMnO4) as a model of pollutant with two methods for achieved the effect of annealing temperature of NiO thin films on the photo-catalytic test and effect the grain size and weight of NiO nanopowder for photo-degradation percentage under exposure to UV-Visible source irradiation. Keywords: Nickel oxide (NiO), Sol gel processing, Contact angle, SEM, XRD, AFM