Growth and Characterization of ZnO based Heterojunction diodes and ZnO Nanostructuresby Pulsed Laser Ablation

Transparent conducting oxides (TCO’s) have been known and used for technologically important applications for more than 50 years. The oxide materials such as In2O3, SnO2 and impurity doped SnO2: Sb, SnO2: F and In2O3: Sn (indium tin oxide) were primarily used as TCO’s. Indium based oxides had been widely used as TCO’s for the past few decades. But the current increase in the cost of indium and scarcity of this material created the difficulty in obtaining low cost TCO’s. Hence the search for alternative TCO material has been a topic of active research for the last few decades. This resulted in the development of various binary and ternary compounds. But the advantages of using binary oxides are the easiness to control the composition and deposition parameters. ZnO has been identified as the one of the promising candidate for transparent electronic applications owing to its exciting optoelectronic properties. Some optoelectronics applications of ZnO overlap with that of GaN, another wide band gap semiconductor which is widely used for the production of green, blue-violet and white light emitting devices. However ZnO has some advantages over GaN among which are the availability of fairly high quality ZnO bulk single crystals and large excitonic binding energy. ZnO also has much simpler crystal-growth technology, resulting in a potentially lower cost for ZnO based devices. Most of the TCO’s are n-type semiconductors and are utilized as transparent electrodes in variety of commercial applications such as photovoltaics, electrochromic windows, flat panel displays. TCO’s provide a great potential for realizing diverse range of active functions, novel functions can be integrated into the materials according to the requirement. However the application of TCO’s has been restricted to transparent electrodes, ii notwithstanding the fact that TCO’s are n-type semiconductors. The basic reason is the lack of p-type TCO, many of the active functions in semiconductor originate from the nature of pn-junction. In 1997, H. Kawazoe et al reported the CuAlO2 as the first p-type TCO along with the chemical design concept for the exploration of other p-type TCO’s. This has led to the fabrication of all transparent diode and transistors. Fabrication of nanostructures of TCO has been a focus of an ever-increasing number of researchers world wide, mainly due to their unique optical and electronic properties which makes them ideal for a wide spectrum of applications ranging from flexible displays, quantum well lasers to in vivo biological imaging and therapeutic agents. ZnO is a highly multifunctional material system with highly promising application potential for UV light emitting diodes, diode lasers, sensors, etc. ZnO nanocrystals and nanorods doped with transition metal impurities have also attracted great interest, recently, for their spin-electronic applications This thesis summarizes the results on the growth and characterization of ZnO based diodes and nanostructures by pulsed laser ablation. Various ZnO based heterojunction diodes have been fabricated using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and their electrical characteristics were interpreted using existing models. Pulsed laser ablation has been employed to fabricate ZnO quantum dots, ZnO nanorods and ZnMgO/ZnO multiple quantum well structures with the aim of studying the luminescent properties.

Effects and Modifications in In/Se and In/Sb Systems by Swift Heavy Ion Irradiation

Department of Physics, Cochin University of Science and Technology

Influence of Si, Sb and Sr Additions on the Microstructure, Mechanical Properties and Corrosion Behavior of AZ91 Magnesium Alloy

All the exciting work on developing new and better alloys has led older alloys, such as AZ9l , being abandoned by researchers. lt is believed that the full potential of AZ9l in automotive design has not been realized. Whatever works have been carried out on AZ9lalloy to improve its mechanical properties are insufficient in terms of its potential usage in auto industries. Due to the fact that AZ91 offers high room temperature mechanical properties and good castability, still this alloy is a primary choice for the auto component manufactures. Small improvement in its creep properties will have a huge impact in the transportation industries. Hence, in the present work, “Influence of Si, Sb and Sr Additions on the Microstructure, Mechanical Properties and Corrosion Behavior of AZ91 Magnesium Alloy”, an attempt has been made to improve the creep properties of AZ9l alloy through minor alloying elemental additions and to understand its strengthening mechanisms. The effect of alloying additions on the ageing and tensile properties of AZ9l is also studied. In addition to that, role of various intermetallics formed due to the alloying additions on the corrosion properties of AZ9l alloy is investigated.