The zinc oxide (ZnO)-grafted polymers have emerged as a prominent material for fabrication of 3D printed biosensor due to its inherent antibacterial, antifungal, room temperature ferromagnetic magnetic behaviour, crystallinity, high thermal conductivity and high exaction binding energy. In this study, ZnO (nanoparticles (NPs)) were grafted with polylactic acid (PLA) using twin-screw compounder for preparations of feedstock filaments. The filaments were prepared by varying input parameters of twin-screw compounder such as ZnO concentration in PLA (0–2%), forced loading (10–15 kg) and torque (0.1–0.2 Nm). Further tests were conducted for thermal properties (on differential scanning calorimetry set-up), mechanical properties (on ultimate tensile testing set-up, Shore D surface hardness, optical photomicrograph-based porosity analysis) and shape memory effect (with stimulus as water under different temperature conditions). The results of the study show that inducing 1% ZnO in PLA led to the formation of highly responsive composite with water as stimulus (at 25°C temperature), mechanically weak, porous, soft surface, while incorporation of 2% ZnO in PLA headed to less porous, harder and responsive composite to the water as stimulus (at 40°C temperature). The proposed combination of ZnO NPs and PLA shows encouraging range of crystallinity, tensile properties and shape memory effect, which made it an eligible candidate for 3D printing applications.
In the present work, a Dy doped ZnO thin film deposited by the spin coating method has been studied for its potential application in a ZnO based UV detector. The investigations on the structural property and surface morphology of the thin film ensure that the prepared samples are crystalline and exhibit a hexagonal crystal structure of ZnO. A small change in crystallite size has been observed due to Dy doping in ZnO. AFM analysis ascertains the grain growth and smooth surface of the thin films. The Dy doped ZnO thin film exhibits a significant enhancement in UV region absorption as compared to the pure ZnO thin film, which suggests that Dy doped ZnO can be used as a UV detector. Under UV irradiation of wavelength 325 nm, the photocurrent value of Dy doped ZnO is 105.54 μA at 4.5 V, which is 31 times greater than that of the un-doped ZnO thin film (3.39 μA). The calculated value of responsivity is found to increase significantly due to the incorporation of Dy in the ZnO lattice. The observed higher value of photocurrent and responsivity could be attributed to the substitution of Dy in the ZnO lattice, which enhances the conductivity, electron mobility, and defects in ZnO and benefits the UV sensing property.
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