Induced red emission and diamagnetic maintenance in cubic Sb₂O₃ nanostructures via nitrogen insertion

To study the influence of nitrogen on the properties of Sb₂O₃ nanostructures, a synthetic strategy was adopted to insert nitrogen into Sb₂O₃ lattice. Sb₂O₃ nanostructures were synthesized by vapor transport technique utilizing Ar plus O₂ and N₂ plus O₂ gas mixes. EDAX inferred the presence of N besides to Sb and O for the films synthesized with N₂ flow. This was also confirmed by presence of two small absorption bands around 2967.22 and 1052.00 cm^− 1 in the FTIR spectrum. The insertion of N reduces the peak intensities of the cubic Sb₂O₃ phase and changed the morphology from randomly oriented nanowires to nanospheres/nanoprisms. The evaluated optical band gap values were 3.31 and 2.67 eV for the films synthesized with Ar and N₂ flows, respectively. In addition to the two emission peaks around 397 and 467 nm which were observed for the films synthesized with Ar flows, the films synthesized with N₂ flows had additionally enhanced red emission band with a maximum at 682 nm. Nitrogen increased the specific magnetization and maintained the diamagnetic behavior. The N doped Sb₂O₃ nanospheres/nanoprisms may be used as effective red-light emitters.