Sonochemical Synthesis of Zinc Oxide Nanostructures for Sensing and Energy Harvesting

Authors

Phani Kiran Vabbina, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Florida International UniversityFollow

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Major/Program

Electrical Engineering

First Advisor's Name

Nezih Pala

First Advisor's Committee Title

Major Professor

Second Advisor's Name

Chunlei Wang

Second Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Third Advisor's Name

Gang Quan

Third Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Fourth Advisor's Name

Jean Andrian

Fourth Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Keywords

Sonochemistry, nanostructures, Zinc Oxide, MoS2, Graphene, Biosensing, Photodetectors, Perovskite Solar cells, Dye sensitized Solar Cells

Date of Defense

7-6-2016

Abstract

Semiconductor nanostructures have attracted considerable research interest due to their unique physical and chemical properties at nanoscale which open new frontiers for applications in electronics and sensing. Zinc oxide nanostructures with a wide range of applications, especially in optoelectronic devices and bio sensing, have been the focus of research over the past few decades. However ZnO nanostructures have failed to penetrate the market as they were expected to, a few years ago. The two main reasons widely recognized as bottleneck for ZnO nanostructures are (1) Synthesis technique which is fast, economical, and environmentally benign which would allow the growth on arbitrary substrates and (2) Difficulty in producing stable p-type doping. The main objective of this research work is to address these two bottlenecks and find a solution that is inexpensive, environmentally benign and CMOS compatible. To achieve this, we developed a Sonochemical method to synthesize 1D ZnO Nanorods, core-shell nanorods, 2D nanowalls and nanoflakes on arbitrary substrates which is a rapid, inexpensive, CMOS compatible and environmentally benign method and allows us to grow ZnO nanostructures on any arbitrary substrate at ambient conditions while most other popular methods used are either very slow or involve extreme conditions such as high temperatures and low pressure.

A stable, reproducible p-type doping in ZnO is one of the most sought out application in the field of optoelectronics. Here in this project, we doped ZnO nanostructures using sonochemical method to achieve a stable and reproducible doping in ZnO. We have fabricated a homogeneous ZnO radial p-n junction by growing a p-type shell around an n-type core in a controlled way using the sonochemical synthesis method to realize ZnO homogeneous core-shell radial p-n junction for UV detection.

ZnO has a wide range of applications from sensing to energy harvesting. In this work, we demonstrate the successful fabrication of an electrochemical immunosensor using ZnO nanoflakes to detect Cortisol and compare their performance with that of ZnO nanorods. We have explored the use of ZnO nanorods in energy harvesting in the form of Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC) and Perovskite Solar Cells.

Identifier

FIDC000787

ORCID

orcid.org/0000-0002-8126-5152

Recommended Citation

Vabbina, Phani Kiran, "Sonochemical Synthesis of Zinc Oxide Nanostructures for Sensing and Energy Harvesting" (2016). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2534.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2534