Fabrication of N-doped porous ZnO nanosheets by annealing Zn films at low temperatures.

In this work, the direct growth of nitrogen (N)-doped porous ZnO nanosheets at low temperatures via the conventional plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) method is presented. The growth was based on the thermal annealing of a Zn film composed of Zn nanosheets in oxygen and nitrogen vapors produced via PECVD, with N2O as a source gas. The ZnO nanosheets with well-defined crystallinity were found to have been grown at temperatures over 280 degrees C, and to have had N-doped porous structures. The ZnO nanosheets grown at 380 degrees C were shown to have had a mean thickness of about 5 nm, a mean pore diameter of about 13.3 nm, and 6.7% porosity, and exhibited Raman and photoluminescence peaks characteristic of N-doped ZnO. It is suggested that the ZnO nanosheets were likely formed through their direct oxidation.