Gas-phase anion exchange towards ZnO/ZnSe heterostructures with intensive visible light emission

Abstract

Gas-phase anion exchange favors the formation of highly crystalline and metastable nanostructures which may possess superior properties. In the present work, we employed gas-phase anion exchange to convert ZnO nanorods into ZnSe nanostructures. We found that the thick ZnO nanorods transformed into a ZnO/ZnSe core/shell structure with a zinc blende ZnSe shell via nucleation and growth of ZnSe nanoparticles, while the thin ones could directly template the growth of pure WZ–ZnSe nanorods. The ZnO/ZnSe heterostructure shows intensive green emission, which arises from the V_Zn-related defect complexes in the ZnO core.