The study investigates the growth by pulsed-laser deposition (PLD) of ZnO thin films for the eventual incorporation into piezo-electric actuators and other sensors being developed at the University of Twente. All films are purely c-axis oriented, and results are presented which suggest the production of some of the highest quality ZnO thin films yet reported. These include films with rocking cu...

ZnO thin films deposited on various substrates were characterized by slow positron implantation spectroscopy (SPIS) combined with X-ray diffraction (XRD). All films studied exhibit wurtzite structure and crystallite size 20-100 nm. The mosaic spread of crystallites is relatively small for the films grown on single crystalline substrates while it is substantial for the film grown on amorphous su...

Hydrothermal zinc oxide (ZnO) thick films were successfully grown on the chemical vapor deposition (CVD)-grown thick ZnO seed layers on a-plane sapphire substrates using the aqueous solution of zinc nitrate dehydrate (Zn(NO3)2). The use of the CVD ZnO seed layers with the flat surfaces seems to be a key technique for obtaining thick films instead of vertically aligned nanostructures as reported...

In this report, the structures, morphologies, optical, electrical and gas sensing properties of ZnO and ZnO: Na spin-coated films are studied. X-ray diffraction (XRD) results reveal that the films are of a single phase wurtzite ZnO with a preferential orientation along (002) direction parallel to c-axis. Na doping reduces the crystalline quality of the films. The plane surface of ZnO film turne...

Wurtzite ZnO has many potential applications in optoelectronic devices, and the hydrogenated ZnO exhibits excellent photoelectronic properties compared to undoped ZnO; however, the structure of H-related defects is still unclear. In this article, the effects of hydrogen-plasma treatment and subsequent annealing on the electrical and optical properties of ZnO films were investigated by a combina...

The microstructure and micro-composition of ZnO thin films doped with Al, deposited on Si/SiO2 substrates by sol-gel method were investigated by scanning and high resolution transmission electron microscopy and related energy dispersive X-ray analyses (SEM-EDX, STEM-HRTEM/EDX). Thin films of ZnO were prepared by deposition of 1-10 successive layers with 0.5 at.% and 5 at.% Al concentrations. Th...

ZnO thin films deposited on various substrates were characterized by slow positron implantation spectroscopy (SPIS) combined with X-ray diffraction (XRD). All films studied exhibit wurtzite structure and crystallite size 20-100 nm. The mosaic spread of crystallites is relatively small for the films grown on single crystalline substrates while it is substantial for the film grown on amorphous su...

Fabrication of the strain-gated inverter (SGI) The SGI was fabricated by bonding two ZnO NWs laterally on a Dura-Lar film. The thickness of the Dura-Lar film is 0.5 mm. The ZnO NWs were synthesized via a physical vapor deposition method reported elsewhere [32] and typically have diameters of 300 nm and lengths of 400 μm (Fig. 1a). The films were first cleaned with acetone, isopropyl alcohol and...

In DMS materials, a small fraction of a host semiconductor cation is substituted by magnetic ions. We chose as semiconducting host the transparent ZnO, with a bandgap of 3.3 eV at room temperature. Studies on ZnO doped with 3d transition metals indicated only small magnetic moments. The more recent results for Gd in GaN, indicating high magnetic moments, motivated us to investigate ZnO thin fil...

Zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films have been widely investigated due to their multifunctional properties, i.e., catalytic, semiconducting and optical. They have found practical use in a wide number of application fields. However, the presence of a compact micro/nanostructure has often limited the resulting material properties. Moreover, with the advent of low-dimensional ZnO nanostructures featuring u...