Additionally, a weak (101) peak indicates that the AZO film is a polycrystalline

structure. ZnO NRs grow coherently with the bottom AZO film, maintaining the preferential orientation of the [001] axis. For samples S1 to S4, the intensity of the (002) peak enhances with the increase of growth duration, suggesting that sample S4 has better crystallinity. The reduction of the (002) peak intensity for sample S5 is because the NRs are disordered and have more defects after the new NRs grow at NR self-attraction positions. Figure 3 XRD patterns of AZO film and samples S1 to S5. In order to cross-check the crystalline quality of the NRs, a TEM image of a ZnO NR is shown in Figure 4a and clearly indicates the absence of metal Selleck Entospletinib catalysts on the ending. In a high-resolution TEM image, Figure 4b, continuous crystal planes can be seen, which are perpendicular to the growth direction and exhibit an interplanar distance of 0.26 nm. The inset in Figure 4b presents the selected-area electron diffraction pattern from this NR, which suggests that NR is the single-crystal ZnO with wurtzite structure. Figure 4 TEM images of a ZnO NR in sample S3. (a) TEM image of a ZnO NR in

sample S3, (b) HRTEM image taken at the circle position CHIR98014 in vivo in (a), inset is the corresponding selected-area electron diffraction pattern. Room-temperature PL properties of ZnO NRAs of samples S1 to S5 are shown in Figure 5. There are two Adriamycin supplier emission peaks in the PL spectra. One peak located at about 377 nm is the near-band-edge emission or UV emission, and the other green band peak at about 500 nm is the deep-level emission [3]. The relative PL peak intensity ratio (R = I UV / I DLE) is defined as a figure of merit. R is 0.5, 1.6, 1.6, 5.1, and 1.7 for samples S1, S2, S3, S4, and S5, respectively. Comparing samples S1 to S4, it is found that R enhances with the increase of growth duration, which is due to the decrease of oxygen vacancies [18]. Sample S1 has the strongest deep-level emission because

it has the most oxygen vacancies and the shortest oxidation time. Although sample S5, however, has the longest growth duration, its deep-level-emission why is relatively strong. This is because the new NRs grown at NR self-attraction positions have worse crystallinity, as shown in Figure 3, shorter growth duration, and more oxygen vacancies. Figure 5 PL spectra of samples. (a) to (e) are samples S1 to S5. Semiconductor nanostructures offer a powerful tool to efficiently manage the light in photovoltaic devices, and the morphology of NWs or NRs has a significant effect on their transmittance and reflectance [14, 25, 26]. The total and diffuse transmittance spectra of the samples were measured, and the results are presented in Figure 6. The average total transmittance (ATT) and average diffuse transmittance (ADT) in the wavelength range of 400 to 1,100 nm are shown in Table 2. ATT and ADT of the AZO film are 88.6% and 0.