Synthesis and photoluminescence study on ZnO nano-particles

A new technique, namely low pressure sputtering, has been developed to fabricate Zn nanoparticles, with a subsequent oxidation to synthesize ZnO nanoparticles in the ambient atmosphere at 500°C. The synthesized ZnO nanoparticle has a size of 6-8 nm with a preferred orientation of c-axis. The produced ZnO nanoparticles have a good UV photoluminescence (PL) emission energy of 3.349 eV with a significant enhancement of donor-acceptor pair emission located at 3.305 eV which implies a number of donor and acceptor bounded excitons existing in the synthesized ZnO nano particles. The near band edge PL emission of the fabricated ZnO is dominated by the bounded excitons at 10 K.