Structural and optical properties of Sb-Al co-doped ZnO nanowires synthesized using Nanoparticle Assisted Pulsed Laser Deposition (NAPLD) with Sb as catalyst

The paper deals with study of Sb-Al co-doped ZnO nanowires synthesized using Nanoparticle Assisted Pulsed Laser Deposition (NAPLD). The nanowires were synthesized by using ZnO:Al as target and Sb coated Si as substrate. At a growth temperature of 750 °C, random oriented high density nanowires with a diameter of about 1 μm and a length up to a few tens of micro meters were synthesized. The samples were annealed at 450, 550 and 650 °C. The Sb-Al co-doped ZnO nanowires annealed at 650 °C showed a significant change in lattice constant of 0.06° from XRD and widening of lattice fringe spacing of 0.56 nm from TEM. From the XPS analysis, a peak at 539.5 eV a near binding energy of SbO bond and peak at 76.2 eV corresponding to AlO bonds confirms the penetration of oxygen. The suppression of A ₁T modes and E ₁(L0) modes from Raman spectroscopy confirms the depletion of oxygen vacancies. Thus resulting in a strong improvement in UV emission and reduction in visible emission as observed from room temperature PL.