Metal oxide nanostructures synthesized on flexible and solid substrates and used for catalysts, UV detectors, and chemical sensors

Abstract

In this paper we demonstrate the visibility of the low temperature chemical synthesis for developing device quality material grown on flexible and solid substrates. Both colorimetric sensors and UV photodetectors will be presented. The colorimetric sensors developed on paper were demonstrated for heavy metal detection, in particular for detecting copper ions in aqueous solutions. The demonstrated colorimetric copper ion sensors developed here are based on ZnO@ZnS core-shell nanoparticles (CSNPs). These sensors demonstrated an excellent low detection limit of less than 1 ppm of copper ions. Further the colorimetric sensors operate efficiently in a wide pH range between 4 and 11, and even in turbulent water. The CSNPs were additionally used as efficient photocatalytic degradation element and were found to be more efficient than pure ZnO nanoparticles (NPs). Also p-NiO/n-ZnO thin film/nanorods pn junctions were synthesized by a two-step synthesis process and were found to act as efficient UV photodetectors. Additionally we show the effect of the morphology of different CuO nanostructures on the efficiency of photo catalytic degradation of Congo red organic dye.