Al doping influences on fabricating ZnO nanowire arrays: Enhanced field emission property

Increase of free electrons concentration and decrease of defects density are the most desirable solution for stimulating the field emission property in semiconductor nanostructures. To implement this, herein we study the field emission efficiency of Al-doped ZnO nanowire arrays with different Al doping concentration, which were prepared by a simple facile hydrothermal method. The Al doping concentration plays a very important role on the structure, morphology, photoluminescence and field emission properties of the as-assembled samples. The results indicate that Al-doped ZnO nanowire arrays with Al doping concentration of 7 at% exhibit the highest quality crystalline structure and lowest defect density relative to others samples thanks to the suitable modification of Al doping, and this led to the increase of free electrons concentration and decrease of defects density, which have an excellent field emission performance with the lower turn on field of 1.03 V/μm and higher field enhancement factor of 20658. This remarkable field emission performances of the Al-doped ZnO nanowire arrays may provide promising applications for different field emission devices.