Effect of sulfur doping on the material characteristics of hematite nanostructures

In the present work, we have attempted to study the effect of anionic sulfur doping on the material characteristics of hematite nanostructures. Here, iron oxide nanoporous thin films are initially prepared by the simple electrochemical method of anodization in ethylene glycol based solution. In the second stage, anionic sulfur doping is performed on the anodized iron oxide nanostructures. Structural, morphological, electrical, optical and compositional characterization of the resultant material is performed with X-ray diffraction (XRD), field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), UV Visible Diffuse reflectance spectroscope (DRS) and X ray photo electron spectroscopy (XPS). The optical band gap measurements together with the VB edge measurements are used to obtain the Fermi level position in the doped and undoped samples. The study gives significant data to analyse the use of hematite nanostructures doped anionically with sulfur in photocatalytic and gas sensing applications.