Abstract
This work reports the luminescence, morphology and synthesis of ZnO quantum dots using a simple wet chemical method and different concentrations of Triethanolamine (TEA) as surfactant. Those nanoparticles emitted a strong blue emission band centered at 429 nm when they are dispersed in hexane. Spherical quantum dots with sizes ranging from 3 to 7 nm were obtained for concentrations from 0 to 0.7 ml. of TEA, whereas a mixture with oval-like nanoparticles was observed from concentrations above of 1.1 ml of TEA. It was also possible to control the values of the band gap in ZnO quantum dots depending on the content of TEA. Based on the high quantum yield of 81% measured for those ZnO nanoparticles respect to quinine sulfate dye (QS), it is suggested that such nanoparticles could be used for biolabeling and ZnO based LEDs.
Highlights
Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles are an important topic of research due to their applications in different areas such as biological systems, optoelectronics devices such as LEDs, solar cells, and gas sensors just to mention a few [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
To the best of our knowledge, it has not been reported a systematic study of the effect of TEA on the blue emission of ZnO nanoparticles, we present in this work a simple method to synthesize ZnO quantum dots (QDs) using only TEA as surfactant
The presence of amines and OH groups was important to increase or decrease surface states or Zn interstitials, which are directly related with the intensity of the blue emission in ZnO quantum dots
Summary
ZnO nanoparticles are an important topic of research due to their applications in different areas such as biological systems, optoelectronics devices such as LEDs, solar cells, and gas sensors just to mention a few [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Oxygen vacancies and zinc interstitial, were probably formed during the synthesis process due to the reaction parameters such as time, solvent and temperature. Those visible emission bands make ZnO a very attractive low-voltage phosphor for field emission displays [15]. Surface treatments of ZnO nanoparticles with polymers such as PMMA or PMAA was performed to increase the QY up to 80% for blue emission [27] Those (ZnO)PMAA-PMMA colloids would not be useful for the fabrication of ZnO based LEDs or optoelectronic devices due to the isolating properties of PMMA. Controlling the synthesis process in order to select and control the presence of specific defects is a challenge, and this is a very important subject of research around the world
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