Forum 02/15/2007

“Recent development on Zinc Oxide nanowires: Materials & Application”

Deli Wang, Asst. Professor – Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, San Diego, CA

A rich genre of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanostructures has been intensively studied for nanoscale optoelectronics, electronics, and biotechnology. In this presentation, I will discuss our recent development on the rational synthesis of zinc oxide nanowires, with a particular focus on the breakthrough on the high-quality p-type doping in ZnO nanowires using a simple chemical vapor deposition method, where phosphorus pentoxide has been used as the dopant source. P-type doping was confirmed by photoluminescence measurements at various temperatures and by studying of the electrical transport in single nanowire field-effect transistors, which enables novel complementary ZnO nanowire devices and opens up enormous opportunities for nanoscale electronics and optoelectronics. I will also discuss ZnO nanowires based ultrahigh sensitivity UV photodetectors with very large optical gain (at the order of more than 10⁷), a broadly applicable model illustrating the uniqueness of nanowire as functional devices such as high efficient photodetesctor, optical intra-chip interconnects, image sensor, and more importantly generic integration with CMOS system for novel electronics and optoelectronics.