Active Materials

Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanostructures are generating significant interest due to unique characteristics that make them good candidates for UV optoelectronic applications such as biosensors and resonators. These properties are due to the wide bandgap of ZnO (3.37eV at room temperature) and to its large exciton energy (60meV), which makes it possible to employ excitonic recombination as a UV-lasing mechanism. ZnO is also a piezoelectric and biosafe material that has probably spawned the richest family of nanostructures to date. Moreover, the ferromagnetic properties of ZnO doped with rare earth metals are also of interest for the design of novel devices that store information as a particular spin orientation (spintronics). Read the rest of the article here