• Seghier, Djelloul
• Choi, Chel-Jong
• Wang, Haiyuan
• Walker, Marc
• Kang, Jie-Hun
• Bhatnagar, Akash
• Park, Dae-Sung
• Farahani, Sepehr K. Vasheghani
• Mcconville, Chris F.

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Physiochemical interactions which occur at the surfaces of oxide materials can significantly impair their performance in many device applications. As a result, surface passivation of oxide materials has been attempted via several deposition methods and with a number of different inert materials. Here, we demonstrate a novel approach to passivate the surface of a versatile semiconducting oxide, zinc oxide (ZnO), evoking a self-assembly methodology. This is achieved via thermodynamic phase transformation, to passivate the surface of ZnO thin films with BeO nanoparticles. Our unique approach involves the use of Be<jats:sub><jats:italic>x</jats:italic></jats:sub>Zn<jats:sub>1-<jats:italic>x</jats:italic></jats:sub>O (BZO) alloy as a starting material that ultimately yields the required coverage of secondary phase BeO nanoparticles and prevents thermally-induced lattice dissociation and defect-mediated chemisorption, which are undesirable features observed at the surface of undoped ZnO. This approach to surface passivation will allow the use of semiconducting oxides in a variety of different electronic applications, while maintaining the inherent properties of the materials.</jats:p>

Topics

• nanoparticle
• Deposition
• impedance spectroscopy
• surface
• phase
• thin film
• zinc
• defect
• self-assembly