0000000000136395

AUTHOR

Maria R. Correia

Enhanced optical properties of Cd–Mg-co-doped ZnO nanoparticles induced by low crystal structure distortion

Abstract The growth of CdxMg0.125-xZn0.875O nanoparticles with yellow-orange luminescence is achieved up to 2.5 at. % Cd via a modified sol–gel process. X-ray diffraction analysis confirmed that all the nanoparticles have the hexagonal wurtzite structure. It is found that Cd doping has a considerable effect on the crystal size, microstrain, band gap, and photoluminescence of the Mg0·125Zn0·875O structure, originating from a preferred crystallographic orientation along the (101) plane of the wurtzite structure. The shift and broadening of the E2(high) mode observed in the Raman spectra due to growth-induced strain corroborates the small distortion observed in the X-ray diffraction data. The …

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Optical active centres in ZnO samples

Abstract In recent years, there has been a resurgence in the interest in the use of ZnO (Eg ∼ 3.37 eV) as a material for a wide range of opto-emitter applications spanning visible and short wavelengths. Bulk, thin films and nanomaterials obtained using different synthesis methods have been investigated for optoelectronic and biotechnological device applications. Nominally undoped bulk samples typically present a myriad-structured near-band-edge recombination, mainly due to free/bound excitons and donor–acceptor pair transitions. Furthermore, deep level emission due to intrinsic defects and extrinsic impurities, such as transition metal ions, are commonly observed in different grades of bulk…

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Light-induced nonthermal population of optical phonons in nanocrystals

Raman spectroscopy is widely used to study bulk and nanomaterials, where information is frequently obtained from spectral line positions and intensities. In this study, we monitored the Raman spectrum of ensembles of semiconductor nanocrystals (NCs) as a function of optical excitation intensity (optical excitation experiments). We observe that in NCs the red-shift of the Raman peak position with increasing light power density is much steeper than that recorded for the corresponding bulk material. The increase in optical excitation intensity results also in an increasingly higher temperature of the NCs as obtained with Raman thermometry through the commonly used Stokes/anti-Stokes intensity …

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Near band edge and defect emissions in wurtzite Cd0.025Mg0.10Zn0.875O nanocrystals

Abstract We report on near band edge and local defects emissions in Cd0·025Mg0·10Zn0·875O (CdMgZnO) nanoparticles (NPs) as a function of temperature, where a strong temperature-dependent near-infrared emission around 1.7 eV (~730 nm) has been observed. The NPs were synthesized by a modified sol-gel method and were annealed at 750 °C after growing. The crystallographic parameters have been determined by 2-dimensional synchrotron x-ray diffraction (XRD) and conventional XRD analysis, confirming their growth within the wurtzite phase with a preferred orientation along the (101) plane and an apparent crystallite size of 52.72 ± 0.18 nm. This apparent crystallite size is consistent with the near…

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The role of Ga and Bi doping on the local structure of transparent zinc oxide thin films

The experiment at HASYLAB/DESY was performed within the project I-20180036 EC. The research leading to this result has been supported by the project CALIPSOplus under the Grant Agreement 730872 from the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation HORIZON 2020. Filipe Correia is grateful to the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal) for the Ph.D. Grant SFRH/BD/111720/2015. Joana Ribeiro is grateful to the Project WinPSC - POCI-01-0247-FEDER-017796, for the research grant from the Agência Nacional de Inovação, co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation (COMPETE 2020), under the…

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