ZnO-nanorods: A possible white LED phosphor

Sachindra Nath Sarangi, Arun T., Dinseh K. Ray, Pratap Kumar Sahoo, Shinji Nozaki, Noriyuki Sugiyama, and
Kazuo Uchida

Citation: AIP Conference Proceedings 1832, 060022 (2017); doi: 10.1063/1.4980427

View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4980427
View Table of Contents: http://aip.scitation.org/toc/apc/1832/1
Published by the American Institute of Physics
 ZnO-nanorods: A Possible White LED Phosphor
Sachindra Nath Sarangi1, *, Arun T 1, Dinseh K. Ray 1, Pratap Kumar Sahoo2,
Shinji Nozaki3, Noriyuki Sugiyama4 and Kazuo Uchida3
1
Institute of Physics, Sachivalaya Marg, Bhubaneswar 751005, India.
2
National Institute of Science and Education Research, Institute of Physics campus, Sachivalaya Marg,
Bhubaneswar 751005, India.
3
Graduate School of Informatics and Engineering, The University of Electro-Communications, 1-5-1 Chofugaoka,
Chofu-shi, Tokyo 182-8585 Japan
4
Nanoteco Corporation, The University of Electro-Communications, 1-5-1 Chofugaoka, Chofu-shi,
Tokyo 182-8585 Japan
*Corresponding author: sachin@iopb.res.in

Abstract. The white light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have drawn much attention to replace conventional lighting sources
because of low energy consumption, high light efficiency and long lifetime. Although the most common approach to
produce white light is to combine a blue LED chip and a yellow phosphor, such a white LED cannot be used for a
general lighting application, which requires a broad luminescence spectrum in the visible wavelength range. We have
successfully chemically synthesized the ZnO nanorods showing intense broad luminescence in the visible wavelength
range and made a white LED using the ZnO nanorods as phosphor excited with a blue LED. Their lengths and
diameters were 2 – 10 ȝP and 200 – 800 nm, respectively. The wurtzite structure was confirmed by the x-ray diffraction
measurement. The PL spectrum obtained by exciting the ZnO nanorods with the He-Cd laser has two peaks, one
associated with the near band-edge recombination and the other with recombination via defects. The peak intensity of
the near band-edge luminescence at 388 nm is much weaker than that of the defect-related luminescence. The latter
luminescence peak ranges from 450 to 850 nm and broad enough to be used as a phosphor for a white LED. A white
LED has been fabricated using a blue LED with 450 nm emission and ZnO nanorod powders. The LED performances
show a white light emission and the electroluminescence measurement shows a stiff increase in white light intensity with
increasing blue LED current. The Commission International de1’Eclairage (CIE) chromaticity colour coordinates of 450
nm LED pumped white emission shows a coordinate of (0.31, 0.32) for white LED at 350 mA. These results indicate
that ZnO nanorods provides an alternate and effective approach to achieve high-performance white LEDs and also other
optoelectronic devices.
Keywords: Nanorods, Optical properties, Electroluminescence, Light-emitting diode.
PACS: 78.67.Qa, 78.60.Fi, 85.60.

INTRODUCTION Because of low dimensionality, the quantum

In present days, Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have
paid considerable attention due to its important
applications in common house hold, commercial and
industrial areas. Now, the time has come to replace the
conventional light by LEDs. Since last few years, zinc
oxide (ZnO) is being considered a potential compound
for LEDs due to several advantages over GaN-based
material system [1, 2]. Moreover, the fast increase of
the global interest in ZnO material is due to the fact
that it has varied range of low dimensional structures
such as nanoparticles (NPs) nanorods (NRs), nanobelts
(NBs) and nanotubes (NTs) which can be grown on
any substrate without the need of lattice matching [3].
confinement effect plays an important role and
enhances the oscillation strength of the excitons, which
is favorable for radiative recombination of excitons at
room temperature. Furthermore, ZnO NRs have large
number of intrinsic and extrinsic deep-level defects
that emit different colors of light including violet, blue,
green, yellow, orange and red [4,5]. Thus, these
properties make a start to fabricate ZnO NRs based
different colors of LEDs [6] and ZnO NRs have
potential of being used as intrinsic white light emitting
diodes. We report the design and fabrication process
of white LED with ZnO nanorods as phosphor
materials excited with a blue LED. Our best device
achieves the Commission International de1’Eclairage

DAE Solid State Physics Symposium 2016

AIP Conf. Proc. 1832, 060022-1–060022-3; doi: 10.1063/1.4980427
Published by AIP Publishing. 978-0-7354-1500-3/$30.00

060022-1
(CIE) chromaticity colour coordinates of (0.31, 0.32) 101,102, 110, 103, 200, and 112 crystal planes
for white LED at 350 mA current. respectively which correspond to the typical
diffraction peaks of hexagonal wurtzite ZnO [8]. The
EXPERIMENTAL XRD pattern is identical to the hexagonal phase with
We have already published the synthesis of ZnO Wurtzite structure and pollycrystalline nature.
nanorods via hydrothermal technique [7]. Similarly, a
10 mM Zinc nitrate hydrate (Zn (NO3)2˜6 H2O) and
hexamethylenetetramine ((CH2)6N4) were dissolved in
aqueous deionized (DI) water solution to form a 100
mL solution. Then from the above 50 mL solution
were transferred to a glass beaker of 100 mL capacity.
The glass beaker was covered with an aluminum foil
and kept in an electric oven at 90 °C for 3 h. After
reaction, the sample was collected from the bottom of
the glass beaker and dried in air at 60 °C for several
hours. At last, the powdery samples were collected in a
bottle and kept for fabrication of LED device. The
ZnO nanorod powders coated on a commercially
available blue LED to get white LED. The
morphology and structure properties of samples were
investigated by field-emission scanning electron
microscopy (FESEM), and a X-ray spectrometer Figure 1. Scanning electron microscopy image of
(X’pert Phillips). Photoluminescence (PL) as-grown ZnO nanorods on a Si substrate.
measurements were performed using a He-Cd laser
line of 325 nm as the excitation source. 5000
Electroluminescence (EL) measurements were 101
performed by using a computer controlled UV–vis-
4000
near IR spectrometer with an integrating sphere. 100
.
3000
Intensity

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 2000 110

002 200
The ZnO NRs grown in solution by a simple 1000 103
102
chemical method were found to be distributed 112
uniformly over the Si substrate as shown in the SEM 0
image in Fig. 1. The high magnification SEM image is 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

shown as the inset image in Fig. 1. It can be seen that 2T

the dense ZnO NRs collected on the Si substrate have
distributed randomly over the large area of the
substrates. The NRs with different diameters and
length observed as shown in Fig. (1). The lengths and
diameters of ZnO NRs were found to be 2 – 10 ȝP and
200 – 800 nm, respectively. The inset of Fig (1) shows
the sharp edges and corners of the hexagonal ZnO
nanorods and demonstrates that the crystallinity of the
ZnO is good.
To examine the crystalline structures, the above-
mentioned ZnO NR samples were characterized by
XRD analysis, as shown in Fig. 2. The resulting ZnO
nanorods present a wurzite hexagonal crystal structure.
Figure 2. X-ray diffraction of ZnO nanorods on a Si
substrate.
The photoluminescence (PL) measurement for
prepared ZnO nanorods phosphors recorded at room
temperature (figure not shown here) by exciting the
with the He-Cd laser has two peaks, one associated
with the near band-edge recombination and the other
with recombination via defects. The peak intensity of
the near band-edge luminescence at 388 nm is much
weaker than that of the defect-related luminescence.
The latter luminescence peak ranges from 450 to 850
nm and broad enough to be used as a phosphor for a
white LED.
The diffraction peaks DW VFDWWHULQJ DQJOHV ș RI The ZnO nanorods phosphors coated on a
31.80, 34.51, 36.27, 47.64, 56.61, 62.97, 67.98, and commercially available blue LED, emitting 450 nm
69.20 correspond to the reflection from: 100, 002, emission used for fabrication of white LED. The 450

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nm emission of blue LED act as the excitation source
for ZnO nanorods phosphors. Figure 3, shows the
electroluminescence measurements carried out for
white LED. As shown in Fig. 3 (b), the emission
intensity increases linearly with increasing the LED
current from 350 mA to 850 mA. The CIE
chromaticity coordinates corresponding to the
electroluminescence of fabricated white LED (0.31,
0.32) is close to pure white light (0.330, 0.330)
according to the 1931 CIE coordinate diagram [9]. The
Inset in figure 3 (b) show the photograph of white light
emission from ZnO nanorods phosphor based white
LED.
Figure 3. (a) Electroluminescence spectra of ZnO
nanorods deposited on GaN/InGaN quantum Well
based blue LED, (b) CIE chromaticity colour
coordinates of (0.31, 0.32) for white LED at 350 mA
current. The insets show the white light emission
photo of LED.
060022-3
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
One of the author (SNS) would like to thank Prof.
S. N. Sahu (deceased), Ex-Professor, Institute of
Physics, Sachivalaya Marg, Bhubaneswar-5, India for
his helpful discussions.
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