New investigation of nanosized co-doped Gd-Sm anatase TiO 2 structural, magnetic, optical, and first-principles study

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New investigation of nanosized co‑doped Gd‑Sm anatase ­TiO2 structural, magnetic, optical, and first‑principles study Inssaf Guetni1 · Mohammed Belaiche1   · Chouaib Ahmani Ferdi1 · Moustapha Elansary1 · Ibrahim Bsoul2 Received: 15 June 2020 / Accepted: 13 August 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract For the time we investigated the structural, optical and magnetic properties of (Sm, Gd) co-doped ­TiO2 anatase nanoparticles, in addition to Sm-doped ­TiO2 anatase nanoparticles using sol–gel method. The X-ray diffraction confirmed the single phase of tetragonal anatase with space group ­I41/amd, where the crystallite size was found 7.2 nm and 8.8 nm for ­Ti0.99Sm0.01O2 and ­Ti0.99Sm0.005Gd0.005O2, respectively. The Fourier-transform infrared spectra showed the basic absorption bands in tetragonal anatase structure with a stretching vibration around 500 cm−1 assigned to Ti–O–M, M = (Gd, Sm). Raman spectroscopy demonstrated the presence of the six active vibrational modes for anatase T ­ iO2. Scanning electron microscopy analysis revealed that the particles are spherical in nature and agglomerated. Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy confirmed the high purity of the as-prepared materials. The UV–VIS analysis showed absorption in visible range, due to the electronic transition, which has been confirmed theoretically, also a slight decrease in the band gap was noticed compared to the pure ­TiO2 anatase. The magnetic measurements reveal the existence of weak ferro or ferrimagnetic behavior. In this work, it is the first time that experimental and theoretical results prove that rare earth ions are incorporated into the sites of the T ­ iO2 lattice without the formation of separate phases. In addition, the experimental work carried out has revealed the importance of surface area, crystallinity, light absorption, the presence of oxygen vacancies and structural defects on the magnetic and more particularly optical properties with the highlighting of the intermediate energy level between the valence and conduction bands. This study was complemented by first-principles calculations to investigate the effects of doping anatase T ­ iO2 with the rare-earth elements Sm and Gd on its structural, optical and magnetic properties. Keywords  Anatase ­TiO2 · Synthesis · Nanoparticles · Sm-Gd co-doped · Optical and magnetic properties · First-principles calculations

1 Introduction The Nano-design of rare earth incorporated Titania-based nanostructured materials using various sol–gel and chemical precipitation techniques, has been the subject of research work over the last 10 years, in order to clarify the dopant sites in the structure and the effect of rare earth element doping on the physical and chemical properties   which drastically impact  the ­TiO2 phase. Nowadays the focusing * Mohammed Belaiche [email protected] 1



Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology Unit, E.N.S, Energy Research Centre, Faculty of Sciences, Mohammed V University, B.P. 5118, Takaddoum, Rabat, Morocco



Physics Departme