Synthesis and characterization of one-dimensional Ag-doped ZnO/Ga-doped ZnO coaxial nanostructure diodes

In the pursuit of high injection current diode nanodevices, entire one-dimensional (1D) ZnO coaxial nanostructures with p-n homojunctions is one of the ideal structures. In this study, we synthesized entire 1D ZnO-based coaxial homojunction diodes with p-type Ag-doped ZnO (SZO) nanostructure shells covering n-type Ga-doped ZnO (GZO) nanopagoda (NPG) cores by a metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) technique. The entire 1D SZO-GZO and SZO-ZnO coaxial nanostructures exhibit better diode characteristics, such as lower threshold voltage, better rectification ratios, and better ideality factor n, than that reported for either 2D or 2D-1D p-n heterojunction and/or homojunction diodes. The binding energies of Ga and Ag were evaluated by low-temperature and temperature-dependent photoluminescence. In comparison, the SZO-GZO coaxial p-n nanostructures display better diode performance than the SZO-ZnO ones.