Zinc oxide ͑ZnO͒ nanoparticles ͑NPs͒ in the size range ϳ7-35 nm are synthesized by ball-milling technique, and microstructural and optical properties of the NPs are studied using varieties of techniques. Results from ball-milled NPs are compared with those of the commercially available ZnO nanopowder. X-ray diffraction pattern of the milled NPs indicates lattice strain in the NPs. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy analysis reveal severe lattice distortion and reduction in lattice spacing in some of the NPs. Optical absorption spectra of milled NPs show enhanced absorption peaked at 368 nm, which is blueshifted with reference to starting ZnO powder. Room-temperature photoluminescence spectra show five peaks consisting of ultraviolet and visible bands, and relative intensity of these peaks drastically changes with increasing milling time. Raman spectra of milled powders show redshift and broadening of the Raman modes of ZnO, and a new Raman mode evolve in the milled NPs. A correlation between the microstructure and optical properties of ZnO NPs is made on the basis of these results. Our results clearly demonstrate that commercially available ZnO nanopowders do not exhibit nanosize effects due to relatively large size of the ZnO NPs. Implications of these results are discussed.

The surface plasmons generated at the graphene dielectric interface can be altered by trapping the electric charge. A technique is implemented for trapping the bipolar electric charge on the graphene...

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A technique is implemented for obtaining the high absorption over super-wideband (SWB) in a metal-free THz absorber. The multiple resonant modes with wide spectra are generated in a graphite-based resonator placed on a dielectric cavity merging of which provides the SWB response. The low permittivity dielectric slab sandwiched between the graphite sheet at its bottom and graphite resonator at its top acts as the Fabry–Perot cavity where absorption takes place. The high absorption rate of graphite in the THz regime can make it a suitable candidate for its utilization in implementing the broadband absorber. Thus, the molecular transition due to interaction of energy in graphite also provides the high absorption. The absorption bandwidth can further be enhanced by stacking of multiple layers in two different configurations of the proposed unit cell. The absorber maintains the polarization insensitivity due to symmetry and allows the high absorption for the electromagnetic wave incident up to the angle of more than 75 ° . The proposed absorber can be utilized in the THz electromagnetic shielding applications due to its SWB response.

Zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films have been deposited on Si substrate and glass substrate using thermal evaporation, pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and radiofrequency (RF) sputtering methods. The structural, surface morphological, optical and electrical properties of ZnO thin films deposited by these three methods were investigated and compared systematically using x-ray diffractometer, atomic force microscopy, ellipsometric and current-voltage (I-V) measurement. The ZnO films deposited by RF sputtering method were highly oriented along the (002) plane. The ZnO films grown by thermal evaporation and PLD methods exhibited a polycrystalline nature. The surface roughness was found to be the least and the transparency in the visible region was the highest for the films grown by the RF sputtering method as compared to the films grown by the other two methods. The I-V characteristics reveal that the Pd:Au/ZnO (RF-sputtered) Schottky contact exhibited a better value of ideality factor, series resistance and barrier height as compared to the values obtained for Pd:Au/ZnO (thermally evaporated and pulse laser-deposited) Schottky contacts. The optical bandgap was found to be almost the same for the films grown by all three methods and was estimated to be around 3.2 eV.

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