Structural and optical properties of sol-gel synthesized h-MoO3 nanorods treated by gamma radiation

High energy external gamma radiation has always an impact on semiconductor material by altering its physico-chemical properties. In this paper, the effect of gamma-radiation is observed on sol-gel synthesized metastable h-MoO3 nanorods with absorbed dose variation. The irradiated sample shows a remarkable change in their structural parameters such as average crystallite size decreased, strain, and dislocation density increased and so on are confirmed from the x-ray diffraction (XRD). Functional groups and the corresponding vibration and stretching are analyzed from the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The change in surface morphology is observed from the field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) image and found no remarkable change. However, the optical band gap decreases with increasing absorbed dose and calculated 2.84 eV, 2.82 eV, 2.80 eV and 2.77 eV for 0 kGy, 40 kGy, 80 kGy, and 120 kGy, respectively by Kubelka-Munk (K-M) function from the diffuse reflectance data of UV-vis-NIR spectrophotometer.