Obtenção de pigmentos brancos nanoestruturados de ZnO com diferentes morfologias

Abstract

Since the last decades, zinc oxide (ZnO) has aroused great interest in the industry and scientific community due to applications in the photonics and optics areas, in which its relevant use as a white pigment is observed. Also, for the properties that it presents in the study and obtaining of nanoparticles such as wide energy gap, wide range of radiation absorption, antimicrobial and antifungal activity for generating reactive oxygen species, among others. Motivated by this context, in this work, the synthesis of nanostructured ZnO particles with different morphologies was performed and its application as pigment was evaluated by its dispersion in polymeric matrices. The synthesis was performed by the microwave-assisted hydrothermal method, at a temperature of 120 °C for 32 minutes, in an alkaline solution with different concentrations of NaOH (3M, 5M, 7M, 10M and 12M). Morphological variation was obtained by varying the alkalinity of the precursor solution and formation mechanisms for the different morphologies were proposed. The powder particles were morphologically characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), structurally by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and the Williamson-Hall method (W-H) and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS)