Synthesis of europium-doped zinc oxide micro- and nanowires

Single crystalline Eu³⁺-doped wurtzite ZnO micro- and nanowires were synthesized by a chemical vapor deposition method (CVD). The nanostructures were grown by autocatalytic mechanism at walls of an alumina boat. The structure and properties of the doped ZnO is fully characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDX), scanning and transmission electron microscopy (SEM and TEM), and photoluminescence (PL) methods. The synthesis was carried out for 10 min giving vertically aligned nanowires with mean diameter of 50–400 nm and with length of up to several microns. The nanowires were grown along ±0001] direction. The concentration of Eu³⁺ dopant in the synthesized nanowires was varied from 0.7 to 0.9 at %. The crystal structure and microstructures of the doped nanomaterials were discussed and compared with undoped ZnO. The photoluminescence spectra show that emission of doped samples were shifted towards orange-red region (2.02 eV) relative to undoped zinc oxide nanostructures (2.37 eV) due to Eu³⁺ intraionic transitions from ZnO/Eu.