This article presents a comprehensive experimental study of optical properties of Li-doped ZnO nanorods grown by a low temperature (300 °C) thermal decomposition method. In particular, a study of the room temperature photoluminescence spectra dependence on the Li concentration is presented here. The doping of Li in ZnO nanorods results in a redshift in near band edge emission (NBE) compared to the undoped ZnO nanorods. Depending on the Li concentration, we observe a green emission in Photoluminescence spectra. The possible physical mechanisms governing the visible region luminescence are also discussed. These results show that Li-doped ZnO nanorods with strong visible region luminescence have potential applications in optoelectronic devices.

Solid-state sodium ion batteries are frequently referred to as the most promising technology for next-generation energy storage applications. However, developing a suitable solid electrolyte with high ionic conductivity, excellent electrolyte–electrode interfaces, and a wide electrochemical stability window, remains a major challenge. Although solid-polymer electrolytes have attracted great interest due to their low cost, low density and very good processability, they generally have significantly lower ionic conductivity and poor mechanical strength. Here, we report on the development of a low-cost composite solid polymer electrolyte comprised of poly(ethylene oxide), poly(vinylpyrrolidone) and sodium hexafluorophosphate, mixed with indium arsenide nanowires. We show that the addition of 1.0% by weight of indium arsenide nanowires increases the sodium ion conductivity in the polymer to 1.50 × 10−4 Scm−1 at 40 °C. In order to explain this remarkable characteristic, we propose a new transport model in which sodium ions hop between close-spaced defect sites present on the surface of the nanowires, forming an effective complex conductive percolation network. Our work represents a significant advance in the development of novel solid polymer electrolytes with embedded engineered ultrafast 1D percolation networks for near-future generations of low-cost, high-performance batteries with excellent energy storage capabilities.

Nanowires are widely considered to be key elements in future disruptive electronics and photonics. This paper presents the first detailed study of transport mechanisms in single-crystalline InAs nanowires synthesized by a cheap solvothermal wet chemical method. From detailed analyses of temperature-dependent current–voltage characteristics, it was observed that contacted nanowires operate in a linear transport regime at biases below a critical cross-over voltage. For larger biases, the transport changes to space-charge-limited conduction assisted by traps. The characteristic parameters such as free electron concentration, trap concentration and energy distribution, and electron mobility were all calculated. It was demonstrated that the nanowires have key electrical properties comparable to those of InAs nanowires grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Our results might pave the way for cheap disruptive low-dimensional electronics such as resistive switching devices.

Recent progress in the realization of magnetic GaAs nanowires (NWs) doped with Mn has attracted a lot of attention due to their potential application in spintronics. In this work, we present a detailed Raman investigation of the structural properties of Zn doped GaAs (GaAs:Zn) and Mn-implanted GaAs:Zn (Ga 0.96 Mn 0.04 As:Zn) NWs. A significant broadening and redshift of the optical TO and LO phonon modes are observed for these NWs compared to as-grown undoped wires, which is attributed to strain induced by the Zn/Mn doping and to the presence of implantation-related defects. Moreover, the LO phonon modes are strongly damped, which is interpreted in terms of a strong LO phonon-plasmon coupling, induced by the free hole concentration. Moreover, we report on two new interesting Raman phonon modes (191 and 252 cm −1 ) observed in Mn ion-implanted NWs, which we attribute to E g (TO) and A 1g (LO) vibrational modes in a sheet layer of crystalline arsenic present on the surface of the NWs. This conclusion is supported by fitting the observed Raman shifts for the SO phonon modes to a theoretical dispersion function for a GaAs NW capped with a dielectric shell.

The fabrication of complex nanoscale electronics with reduced dimensions poses challenges on novel techniques to accurately determine fundamental electronic parameters. In this article, we present a universal contactless method based on Raman scattering for measuring the mobility and hole concentration independently in GaAs:Zn and Mn ion-implanted GaAs:Zn nanowires, potentially of great interest for spintronics applications. Clear coupled longitudinal optical phonon-plasmon modes were recorded and fitted with a dielectric function, based on the Drude model, which includes contributions from both plasmons and phonons. From the fitting, we extract accurate values of the plasma frequency and plasma damping constant from which we directly calculate the hole density and mobility, respectively. The extracted mobilities were also used as input data for analysis of complementary four-probe transport measurements, where the corresponding hole concentrations could be calculated and found to be in good agreement with those extracted directly from the Raman data. We also investigated the influence of annealing of the GaAs:Zn nanowires on the hole concentration and mobility and found strong indications of thermally activated defects related to a formed crystalline As/oxide shell around the nanowires. The method proposed here is extremely powerful for the characterization of nanoelectronics in general, and nanospintronics in particular for which Hall measurements are difficult to pursue due to problems related to contact formation, as well as to inherent magnetic properties of the devices.