Donor and acceptor dynamics of phosphorous doped ZnO nanorods with stable p-type conduction: photoluminescence and junction characteristics.

We employed temperature-dependent photoluminescence (PL) to explain the donor and acceptor dynamics in phosphorus doped stable p-type P:ZnO nanorods. The room temperature PL revealed good crystalline and optical quality of P:ZnO nanorods. The 10 K PL spectrum exhibited a dominant acceptor bound exciton (A0X) or donor bound exciton (D0X) emission corresponding to p- and n-type P:ZnO nanorods, respectively. The donor-acceptor-pair (DAP) transitions exhibited different thermal dissociation energies for the p- and n-type P:ZnO nanorods, suggesting their different quenching channels. The quenching of the DAP transitions of the p-type ZnO:P nanorods was associated with the thermal dissociation of the DAP into free excitons, while the DAP transition of the n-type ZnO:P nanorods was quenched through the thermal dissociation of the shallow donor into free electrons. The rectifying behavior of a p-n homojunction diode formed by the p-type P:ZnO nanorods on n-type ZnO film confirmed the p-type conduction of the P:ZnO nanorods.

Structural transition from MgZnO nanowires to ultrathin nanowalls by surface separation: growth evolution and gas sensing properties.

This paper reports a spontaneous method of controlling the growth mode from vertically arrayed ultra-slim MgZnO nanowires to nanowalls through the in-plane random motion of the seed crystals formed by surface phase separation. Seed crystals with a relatively Zn-rich phase were formed by the simultaneous injection of Mg and Zn and became strongly networked when the Zn/Mg flux ratio was increased at high temperatures, leading to the formation of MgZnO nanowalls on various conducting substrates. The hydrogen sensing performance of the MgZnO nanowalls with a two-dimensional network structure was superior to that of the one-dimensional MgZnO nanowires. Based on the microstructural characterizations, the growth procedure for the structural transition from MgZnO nanowires to nanowalls on the Si substrates was proposed.

Controlled growth of heteroepitaxial zinc oxide nanostructures on gallium nitride.

ZnO epitaxial layers were grown on GaN underlying films by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition at various temperatures. An increase in growth temperature led to morphological changes from a smooth film with hexagonal-shaped surface pits to honeycomb-like nanostructures with deep hollow, and additionally resulted in a decrease in dislocation density in the interfacial layers. The reduced dislocation density at the higher growth temperature was attributed to an increase in the size of the critical nucleus and the low nucleation density at the initial stage. The shifts in the peak positions in the X-ray diffraction and photoluminescence were also observed in the samples grown at different temperatures, and were caused by the variation of residual strains after the complete coalescence of the nuclei.

Synthesis and characterization of ZnO/MgZnO heterostructure nanorods by simple two-step evaporation.

ZnO-core/MgZnO-shell heterostructure nanorods with high aspect ratio were synthesized using a two-step thermal evaporation procedure, in which the core and the shell layers were formed separately at different temperatures. Microstructural characterization revealed a position dependence of the crystal structure and composition in the shell layer. The shell layer in the upper region consisted of MgO with quantum dot-like structure having cubic phases embedded in an amorphous oxide layer, while a Mg(0.35)Zn(0.65)O shell layer with a self-assembled superlattice structure of triple periodicity was formed in the middle region.