An ultrathin layer of nickel oxide ͑NiO͒ was deposited on the indium tin oxide ͑ITO͒ anode to enhance the hole injections in organic light-emitting diode ͑OLED͒ devices. A very low turn-on voltage ͑3 V͒ was actually observed for the device with NiO on ITO. The enhancement of hole injections by depositing NiO on the ITO anode was further verified by the hole-only devices. The excellent hole-injection ability of NiO was also demonstrated by devising a device with patterned NiO on the ITO anode. Our results suggest that the NiO/ITO anode is an excellent choice to enhance hole injections of OLED devices.

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A method with the potential to fabricate large-area nanowire field-effect transistors (NW-FETs) was demonstrated in this study. Using a high-speed roller (20-80 cm min(-1)), transfer printing was successfully employed to transfer vertically aligned zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowires grown on a donor substrate to a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) stamp and then print the ordered ZnO nanowire arrays on the received substrate for the fabrication of NW-FETs. ZnO NW-FETs fabricated by this method exhibit high performances with a threshold voltage of around 0.25 V, a current on/off ratio as high as 10(5), a subthreshold slope of 360 mV/dec, and a field-effect mobility of around 90 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1). The excellent device characteristics suggest that the roll-transfer printing technique, which is compatible with the roll-to-roll (R2R) process and operated in atmosphere, has a good potential for the high-speed fabrication of large-area nanowire transistors for flexible devices and flat panel displays.

Diamond-like carbon (DLC) nanocomposite films were deposited at room temperature by inductively coupled plasma chemical vapor deposition using hexamethyldisilane (HMDS), hexamethyldisilazane (HMDSN), and hexamethyldisiloxane (HMDSO) precursors. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy showed that all the films contained nanoparticles. The DLC nanocomposite films deposited by HMDS contained hollow spherical nanocrystallites, called nanoballs, of hexagonal silicon carbide. The nanocomposite films deposited by HMDSN contained crystalline Si3N4 nanoparticles. The nanocomposite films deposited by HMDSO contained amorphous SiOx nanoparticles. Although both types of films had similar hardness, the DLC nanocomposite films exhibited much lower compressive stresses than the DLC films deposited by methane, i.e., 1.5 vs 11 GPa, respectively. Through the enhancement of gas phase reactions, the inductively coupled plasma should be responsible for the formation of nanoparticles in the nanocomposite films.

Aligned GaN nanowire arrays have high potentials for applications in future electronic and optoelectronic devices. In this study, the growth of GaN nanowire arrays with high degree of vertical alignment was attempted by plasma-enhanced CVD on the c-plane GaN substrate. We found that the lattice matching between the substrate and the nanowire is essential for the growth of vertically aligned GaN nanowires. In addition, the initial nucleation process is also found to play a key role in creating the high-quality homoepitaxy at the nanowire-substrate interface. By controlling the nucleation stage, the growth of highly aligned vertical GaN nanowire arrays can be achieved. The reasons for the observed effects are discussed.