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Published on: October 12, 2019
Stable p-type conduction from Sb-decorated head-to-head basal plane inversion domain boundaries in ZnO nanowires
Andrew B Yankovich1, Brian Puchala, Fei Wang
1Department of Material Science and Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
Abstract:
We report that Sb-decorated head-to-head (H-H) basal plane inversion domain boundaries (b-IDBs) lead to stable p-type conduction in Sb-doped ZnO nanowires (NWs) due to Sb and O codoping. Aberration-corrected Z-contrast scanning transmission electron microscopy shows that all of the Sb in the NWs is incorporated into H-H b-IDBs just under the (0001) NW growth surfaces and the (0001) bottom facets of interior voids. Density functional theory calculations show that the extra basal plane of O per H-H b-IDB makes them electron acceptors. NWs containing these defects exhibited stable p-type behavior in a single NW FET over 18 months. This new mechanism for p-type conduction in ZnO offers the potential of ZnO NW based p-n homojunction devices.
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