CuO-La₂O₃ Composite-Enabled MIS Schottky Barrier Diodes: A Novel Approach to Optoelectronic Device Diversification

In this groundbreaking study, we successfully synthesized pristine La nanoparticles and Cu-La composites with varying concentrations (25, 50, and 75% Cu) via precipitation technique which yielded a dual-phase with significantly reduced crystallite size from 39.9 nm to 27.3 nm as evidenced by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. Moreover, Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FE-SEM) imaging revealed a striking transformation from rice-like nanoparticles in pure La to spherical nanoparticles with uniform distribution in Cu-La composites, and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) analysis confirmed the formation of La³⁺ and Cu²⁺ ions with spin-orbit splitting energy levels in CuO-La₂O₃ composites consistent with XRD and FT-IR results. Additionally, the band gap energy calculated from optical absorbance ranged from 3.447 to 2.276 eV indicating potential for optoelectronic applications and furthermore, the thermionic-emission (TE) model was employed to extract the ideality factor (n) and barrier height (Ф_B) from I-V characteristics, yielding an optimal n and Ф_B which corresponding to 1.70 and 0.89 eV under both light and dark conditions thereby making this material a promising candidate for optoelectronic devices.