Excellent enhancement in the device performance of nitrogen plasma treated ZnO nanorods based diodes

Abstract

Impact of the plasma exposure time on the physical properties of homo-epitaxial ZnO nanorods (NRs) and their devices was investigated. Here, ZnO NRs were synthesized by chemical solution method on glass substrates and treated under high intensity nitrogen plasma at different exposure timings. The as-grown as well as treated ZnO NRs exhibited hexagonal crystal structure and (001) as a preferential orientation. While increasing the plasma exposure time from 1 to 15 min, the structural and optical quality of ZnO NRs gradually improved and above this exposure time, both the properties degraded. The devices fabricated with 15 min plasma treated ZnO NRs showed excellent diode performance than the untreated nanostructures based devices. The diodes developed with treated ZnO NRs showed a low turn-on voltage (3.3 V) than the devices developed with untreated NRs.