Controlling oxygen vacancies and properties of ZnO

Intrinsic defects in semiconductors play crucial roles on their electrical and optical properties. In this article, we report on a facile method to control concentration of oxygen vacancies inside ZnO nanostructures and related physical properties based on adjustment of thermal transformation conditions from ZnO2 to ZnO, including annealing atmosphere and temperature. ZnO2 spheres assembled with nanoparticles were formed through the reaction between zinc nitrate and hydrogen peroxide. Significantly, it was found that the adopted temperature and atmosphere have remarkable impact on the concentration of oxygen vacancies, which was revealed by the variations of featured Raman scattering peaks at 584 cm−1. Furthermore, with the increase of oxygen vacancies inside ZnO, the optical band-gap was found to red-shift 350 meV and the room-temperature ferromagnetism became stronger up to 1.6 emu/mg. The defect formation and evolution were discussed according to the chemical equilibrium of decomposition reaction under special local heating environment. This work demonstrated that ZnO2 decomposition is an effective process to control the defect states inside ZnO and related properties.