Synthesis and Optical Properties of ZnO Nanostructures

Abstract: One-dimensional ZnO nanostructures have great potential applications in the fields of optoelectronic and sensor devices. Therefore, it is really important to realize the controllable growth of one-dimensional ZnO nanostructures and investigate their properties. The main points for this thesis are not only to successfully realize the controllable growth of ZnO nonawires, nanorods and quantum dots (QDs), and also investigate the structure and optical properties in detail by the methods of scan electron microscope(SEM), transmission electron microscope(TEM), resonant Raman, photoluminescence(PL) and low-temperature time resolved PL spectrum.to grown ZnO nanorod arrays (ZNAs) on Si substrates. Firstly, the effects of ZnO nanoparticles, pH value of chemical solution, angel ? between substrate and beaker bottom on the structures of the samples were symmetrically investigated and the optimized growth condition to grow ZNAs can be concluded as follows: seed layer of ZnO nanoparticles, pH=6 and ?=70°. On the basis of these, the diameter of ZNAs was well controlled from 150nm~40nm through adjusting the diameter and density of the ZnO nanoparticles pretreated on the Si substrates. The experimental results indicated that both diameter and density of ZnO nanoparticles on the substrates determined the diameter of ZNAs. But when the density is higher than the critical value of 2.3×108cm-2, the density will become the dominant factor to determine the diameter of ZNAs.One the other hand, the optical properties of ZNAs were investigated in detail. The Raman and photoluminescence (PL) results showed that after an annealing treatment around 500oC in air atmosphere, the crystal structure and optical properties became much better due to the decrease of surface defects. The resonant Raman measurements excited by 351.1nm not only revealed that the surface defects play a significant role in the as-grown sample, but also suggested that the strong intensity increase of some Raman scatterings was due to both outgoing resonant Raman scattering effect and deep level defects scattering contribution for ZnO nanorods annealed from 500°C to 700°C. It is the first time to the best of our knowledge that the Raman measurements can be used to monitor the change of surface defects and deep level defects in the CBD grown ZnO nanorods. We have also presented, for the first time, a time resolved PL study in CBD grown ZnO nanorods with different diameters. The results show that the decay time of the excitons in the nanorods strongly depends on the diameter of the nanorods. The altered decay time is mainly due to the surface recombination process. The effective time constant related to the surface recombination velocity was deduced. A thermal treatment under 500°C will suppress the surface recombination channel, resulting in an improvement of the optical quality for the ZnO nanorods.This thesis not only provides the effective way to control the size of ZNAs, but also obtains some beneficial results in aspects of their optical properties, which builds theoretical and experimental foundation for much better and broader applications of one-dimensional ZnO nanostructures.