Synthesis and optical characteristics of yttrium-doped zinc oxide nanorod arrays grown by hydrothermal method

Yttrium-doped ZnO (YZO) nanorods were synthesized by hydrothermal growth on a quartz substrate with various post-annealing temperatures. To investigate the effects of post-annealing on the optical properties and parameters of the nanorods, X-ray diffractometry (XRD), photoluminescence (PL) measurement, and ultraviolet (UV)-visible spectroscopy were used. From the XRD investigation, the full width at half maximum (FWHM) and the dislocation density of the nanorods was found to increase with an increase in the post-annealing temperature. In the PL spectra, the intensity of the near band edge (NBE) emission peak in the UV region also increases with an increase in the temperature of post-annealing. The deep level emission (DLE) peak in the visible region changes with various post-annealing temperatures, and its intensity increases remarkably with post-annealing at 800 degrees C. In this paper, changes in the optical parameters of the nanorods caused by variation in the behavior of Y during post-annealing was investigated, with properties such as absorption coefficients, refractive indices, and dispersion parameters being obtained from transmittance and reflectance analysis.