ZnO NANOPARTICLES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS – NEW ACHIEVMENTS

The biggest advantages of ZnO are a low price, good gas sensing properties, photocatalytic activity, antibacterial activity, possibility to prepare structures with interesting optical properties, like photonic crystals, catalytic materials, in small amounts ZnO is not toxic, etc. There is a lot of different methods of ZnO nanostructures preparation, like MOVPE, high temperature evaporation, gas spraying, pulsed laser deposition, sputtering, sol-gel, wet chemical and electrochemical methods. In our laboratory the special research type of MOCVD apparatus combining possibility of plasma exciting oxidizer like N2O, separate branch with DEZn in Ar, UV irradiation of the deposition area, low pressure operation and inertless infrared radiation furnace has been developed. In the study we have investigated the influence of the growth rate on the morphology of ZnO deposited on Si (100), GaP (111) as well as nanoporous GaP substrates. The same apparatus has been used for ZnO nanoparticles preparation with the diameter of individual nanoparticles of about 25 nm.