Nanocomposite (NC) materials have gained much attention and interest of scientists in recent
years because of their improved properties than the single metal nanoparticles. Nanocomposite is
a combination or matrix, in which different materials combine to develop new properties of the
materials ensuring that one of the materials have size in range of 1-100nm. There are hence two
parts on NC i.e. continuous phase and discontinuous reinforcing phase. Nanocomposite can be
prepared from any combination of materials that can be categorized into three basic building blocks
i.e. metals, ceramics and polymers [1].The nanocomposite can have a combination or have
markedly different mechanical, electrochemical, electrical, catalytic, thermal and optical
properties from the component materials [1, 2]. Further, these NC have emerged as materials of
21st century that offer number of technological and business breakthroughs in all the sectors of
life.
In this work, Ni/ NiO nanocomposite was synthesized using Calotropis procera plant. For this
aim, at first, 5 ml distilled water was added to 0.085 g of this plant. Then, the solution was refluxed
within 10 min, after its pH was changed to 9 using KOH (0.001 M). The plant was filtrated and
the suspension was kept at refrigerator. NiCl2·6H2O (0.1 mM) was added to the mixture of plant
extraction/water (1/2ratio). After 10h, the black resultant was heated at 500 ºC for 2h to produce
Ni/NiO nanocomposite