Thesis Title: Oxide nanowire arrays for energy sciences -- Room 4211, MRDC

Abstract:

Oxide nanowire arrays are playing an important role in energy sciences nowadays, including energy harvesting, energy storage, and power management. By utilizing a wet chemical growth method, we demonstrated the capabilities of synthesizing density controlled vertical ZnO nanowire arrays on a general substrate, optimizing the aspect ratio of the vertical ZnO nanowire arrays guided by a statistical method, epitaxially growing patterned vertical ZnO nanowire arrays on inorganic substrates, epitaxially growing patterned horizontal ZnO nanowire arrays on non-polar ZnO substrates, and the lift-off of the horizontal ZnO nanowire arrays onto general flexible substrates. In addition, single crystalline

PbZrxTi1-xO3 (PZT) nanowire arrays were epitaxially grown on conductive and nonconductive substrates by hydrothermal decomposition.

Beyond that, based on the as-synthesized ZnO nanowire arrays, we demonstrated multilayered three dimensionally integrated direct current and alternating current nanogenerators. By integrating a ZnO nanowire based nanogenerator with a ZnO nanowire based nanosensor, we demonstrated solely ZnO nanowire based self-powered nanosystems. Also, utilizing a commercial full-wave bridge rectifier, we rectified the alternating output charges of the nanogenerator based on PZT nanowire arrays, and the rectified charges were stored into capacitors, which were later discharged to light up a laser diode (LD). In addition, blue/near-ultraviolet (UV) light emitting diodes (LED) composed of ordered ZnO nanowire arrays on p-GaN wafers were presented.