Zinc oxide derived from single source precursor chemistry under chimie douce conditions: formation pathway, defect chemistry and possible applications in thin film printing

Investigation of intrinsic defects in core-shell structured ZnO nanocrystals

“…In the X-band data, we identify two groups of signals that can be assigned to different defect centres, one around g $ 1.96 and the other around g $ 2.00. These two signals have been often reported, either showing up isolated 23,24 or both simultaneously, 19,20,25 however, their assignment is still controversially discussed. 9,10,12,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36] Recently, by means of optically detected magnetic resonance, 37-39 both zinc and oxygen vacancies have been detected.…”

“…A new mechanism is revealed by which the intrinsic defects arising in nanostructured ZnO can be understood. This will help to tailor specific properties of nanostructured materials for nano-device applications such as field-effect transistor (FET) 19 thin film printing, 20 and many others based on nano-architectures such as nanorods, 21 nanowires, 1 or nanocables. 22 …”

Study of a sol–gel precursor and its evolution towards ZnO

“…In these cases, aminoalcohols are expected to bridge zinc-acetate units in a single molecule, thus covering the metal-oxygen core with an organic shell and making it more soluble in non-polar solvents. Other works add a stabilizer to the precursor [25][26][27][28] . Nevertheless, the detailed progress from solution towards crystalline ZnO is still ambiguous.…”

SPACE-CHARGE LAYER, INTRINSIC "BULK" AND SURFACE COMPLEX DEFECTS IN ZnO NANOPARTICLES — A HIGH-FIELD ELECTRON PARAMAGNETIC RESONANCE ANALYSIS

“…Most recently this effect has been interpreted in terms of a \core-shell" model in which the particles consist of a core region that is electronically different from the surface of the ZnO nanoparticles. 9,19 Exploiting the above-derived defect structure, the core is dominated rather by (shallow) donor-type V O , whereas at the surface acceptor-type V 0 Zn and (Zn i À V 0 Zn ) Â prevail. As consequence, the development of a space-charge (depletion) layer as schematically illustrated in Fig.…”

“…Concerning the defect-structural origin of the resonances about g % 2:0, it was recently demonstrated that these signals are owing to surface defects. 9,32,40 Commonly, oxygen vacancies are depleted at the surface layers 10 and defects at the surface are rather attributed to zinc interstitials or zinc vacancies. 16 Additional to the interstitials formed according to the Schottky-type defect equilibrium (3), zinc interstitials and zinc vacancies are generated owing to a Frenkel-type defect equilibrium according to…”