Affiliations 

  • 1 Plasma Technology Research Centre, Department of Physics, University of Malaya, Lembah Pantai, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 2 Low Dimensional Material Research Centre, Department of Physics, University of Malaya, Lembah Pantai, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
PLoS One, 2015;10(3):e0121756.
PMID: 25756598 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0121756

Abstract

Vapor phase transport (VPT) assisted by mixture of methanol and acetone via thermal evaporation of brass (CuZn) was used to prepare un-doped and Al-doped zinc oxide (ZnO) nanostructures (NSs). The structure and morphology were characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and x-ray diffraction (XRD). Photoluminescence (PL) properties of un-doped and Al-doped ZnO showed significant changes in the optical properties providing evidence for several types of defects such as zinc interstitials (Zni), oxygen interstitials (Oi), zinc vacancy (Vzn), singly charged zinc vacancy (VZn-), oxygen vacancy (Vo), singly charged oxygen vacancy (Vo+) and oxygen anti-site defects (OZn) in the grown NSs. The Al-doped ZnO NSs have exhibited shifted PL peaks at near band edge (NBE) and red luminescence compared to the un-doped ZnO. The Raman scattering results provided evidence of Al doping into the ZnO NSs due to peak shift from 145 cm-1 to an anomalous peak at 138 cm-1. Presence of enhanced Raman signal at around 274 and 743 cm-1 further confirmed Al in ZnO NSs. The enhanced D and G band in all Al-doped ZnO NSs shows possible functionalization and doping process in ZnO NSs.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.