Zinc Oxide and Copper Oxide Nanostructures: Fundamentals and Applications
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Zinc Oxide and Copper Oxide Nanostructures: Fundamentals and Applications Magnus Willander1, Omer Nur1, Gul Amin1, A. Zainelabdin1, and S. Zaman1 1 Department of Science and Technology, Campus Norrköping, Linköping University SE-601 74 Norrköping, Sweden
ABSTRACT Copper oxide (CuO) and zinc oxide (ZnO) nanostructures complement each other since CuO is unintentional p-type and ZnO unintentional n-type. Using the low temperature chemical growth approach, the effect on morphology of varying the pH of the grown ZnO nanostructures and CuO micro structures is monitored. For both materials the variation of the pH was found to lead to a large variation on the morphology achieved. The grown ZnO NRs and CuO micro flowers material were used to fabricate devices. We demonstrate results from ZnO nanorods (NRs)/polymer p-n hybrid heterojunctions chemically grown on paper and using a process on paper for light emitting diodes (LEDs) applications as well as some large area light emitting diodes LEDs. The growth of CuO micro flowers indicated good quality material for sensing applications. The grown CuO micro flowers were employed as pH sensors. The results indicated a superior performance as expect due to the catalytic properties of this material. INTRODUCTION Zinc oxide (ZnO) has a direct wide band- gap of 3.37 eV at room temperature and large exciton binding energy of (60 meV) [1]. ZnO nanostructures (NSs) have attracted much attention due to their large surface to volume ratio, good electrical, optical and piezoelectric properties [2, 3]. Therefore, the development of ZnO structures with controllable dimension and morphology is indispensable for fabricating state of the art devices. There are several ZnO NSs synthesis methods that have been used [4, 5]. Among all hydrothermal method is relatively simple and cheap method. To control the morphology of ZnO nanostructures in this method there are several hydrothermal conditions that should be controllably varied such as temperature, time, precursors concentration and growth solution pH value. Literature survey indicates that the effect of pH value has an important influence on the morphology on the final structure also among other growth conditions the effect of the pH is complex and need to tune for different morphology because OH- is strongly related to the reactions that produce the ZnO NSs [2, 6-8]. On the other hand, copper oxide (CuO) is an important p-type metal oxide semiconductor with narrow bandgap (1.2 eV), has been investigated as an extraordinary and attractive material due to its plentiful unique characteristics [9-11]. Owing to its exceptional electrochemical activity and the possibility of promoting electron transfer at a low potential, nanostructured CuO is a good candidate for sensing application [12]. CuO nanostructures have unique advantages including the high specific surface area, chemical stability, electrochemical activity, and high electron communication features [13]. The pH of the solution is very important parameter to for the growth of the nanostructure
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