A low temperature process for phosphorous doped ZnO nanorods via a combination of hydrothermal and spin-on dopant methods.

We demonstrate the fabrication of solution based low temperature-processed p-type ZnO NRs doped with phosphorous by using a spin-on-dopant method coupled with a hydrothermal process. We confirmed the incorporation of phosphorous dopants into a ZnO crystal by analyzing SIMS profiles, together with the evolution of the photoluminescence spectra. It is further revealed that the electrical properties of the p-type ZnO/n-type Si heterojunction diode exhibited good rectifying behavior, confirming that p-type ZnO NRs were successfully formed. In addition, we demonstrate that a piezoelectric nanogenerator with p-type ZnO NRs made on a glass substrate shows large enough power to drive polymer dispersed liquid crystal displays.