ZnO NPs have good antimicrobial activity that can be utilized as agents to prevent harmful microorganism growth in food. However, the use of ZnO NPs as food additive is limited by the perceived high toxicity of ZnO NPs in many earlier toxicity studies. In this study, surface modification by silica coating was used to reduce the toxicity of ZnO NPs by significantly reducing the dissolution of th...

Vertically aligned ZnO nanowires have been synthesized by a hydrothermal method. After being irradiated by a short laser pulse, the tips of the as-synthesized ZnO nanowires can be tailored into a spherical shape. Transmission electron microscopy revealed that the spherical tip is a single-crystalline piece connected to the body of the ZnO nanowire, and that the center of the sphere is hollow. T...

ZnO nanotubes and nanorods grown on gold thin film were used to create pH sensor devices. The developed ZnO nanotube and nanorod pH sensors display good reproducibility, repeatability and long-term stability and exhibit a pH-dependent electrochemical potential difference versus an Ag/AgCl reference electrode over a large dynamic pH range. We found the ZnO nanotubes provide sensitivity as high a...

Aligned ZnO/ZnSe core/shell nanorods (NRs) with type-II energy band alignment were fabricated by pulsed laser deposition of ZnSe on the surfaces of hydrothermally grown ZnO NRs. The obtained ZnO/ZnSe core/shell NRs are composed of wurtzite ZnO cores and zinc blende ZnSe shells. The bare ZnO NRs are capable of emitting strong ultraviolet (UV) near band edge (NBE) emission at 325-nm light excitat...

ZnO nano/microstructures have been formed by thermal evaporation method using ZnO powders mixed with carbon group elements (C, Si, Ge, Sn, or Pb) as the reducing agent. For cases of mixed precursors of ZnO/C, ZnO/Si, and ZnO/Ge, the pure ZnO nano/microstructures are realized, while for ZnO/Sn (ZnO/Pb) systems, the phase of Pb2O3(Zn2SnO4) generally are represented in the ZnO products. The appear...

High-quality m-plane orientated ZnO films have been successfully grown on m-plane sapphire by using radio frequency magnetron sputtering deposition. The introduction of a nanometer-thick, low-temperature-grown ZnO buffer layer effectively eliminates inclusions of other undesirable orientations. The structure characteristics of the ZnO epi-layers were thoroughly studied by synchrotron X-ray scat...

A chiral ionic liquid with a natural alcohol based chain was used as a tailoring agent for the synthesis of simple and cost effective materials such as ZnO, CuO, CuO–ZnO with peculiar morphology. The morphology and chemical composition of the microstructures were investigated by bright-field and scanning transmission microscopy (BF-TEM and STEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), Four...

We report on hybrid films based on ZnO/organic dye prepared by electrodeposition using tetrasulfonated copper phthalocyanines (TS-CuPc) and Eosin-Y (EoY). Both the morphology and porosity of hybrid ZnO films are highly dependent on the type of dyes used in the synthesis. High photosensitivity was observed for ZnO/EoY films, while a very weak photoresponse was obtained for ZnO/TS-CuPc films. Des...

The growth of ZnO nanotubes and nanosquids is obtained by conventional thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD) without the use of catalysts or templates. Characterization of these ZnO nanostructures was conducted by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), Raman spectroscopy, and photoluminescence (PL). Results indicate that these ZnO nanostructures m...