Sharif Digital Repository

ZnO is a wide and direct band gap (3.37 eV) semiconducting material with a large exciton binding energy (60 meV). It has been extensively studied in the last few years owing to its potential applications in various fields such as surface acoustic wave devices (SAW), transparent electrode, solar cell windows, photovoltaic devices, gas sensors and photoelectrochemical cells. Recently, much attention has been paid to rare-earth (RE) doped ZnO for possible applications in visible emitting phosphors in displays, high power lasers, and other optoelectronic devices. In this thesis, initially ZnO thin films were deposited on glass and ITO substrates using sol-gel dip-coating method. Optical and... 

For application as a biosensor electrode, Aligned Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) were produced on Stainless Steel 304 substrate by optimizing the CVD method. For better performance, Zinc Oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles were coated on CNTs, using electrochemical deposition method at room temperature and process variables were optimized to acquire discrete particles with a narrow distribution. After that, Polyaniline, which is a conductive polymer, was electropolymerized on CNT/ZnO composite to further improve the electrocatalytic abilities of the electrode. The produced electrode was then used to detect glucose by Cyclic Voltammetry and Amperometry methods. This electrode shows a linear relationship... 

Zinc oxide(ZnO) nanoparticles have been used in a wide-ranging of applications such as transparent UV protection, medical treatments, light emitting diodes, sensors and photovoltaic cells. Many applications of ZnO nanoparticles could be improved by changing the particle size, shape and morphology. In order to take advantage of the unique size dependent properties observed for ZnO anoparticles, knowledge of how particle growth can be controlled is required. As an alternative to transmittance electron microscopy (TEM), which is already used in the study of size and monodispersity of ZnO nanoparticles during synthesis, we proposed a simple spectrophotometric method coupled with chemometric... 

In this report, a combination of in-situ chemical synthesis and electrolysis methods was applied for the preparation of zinc oxide/graphene quasi core-shell nanoparticles. Pure zinc oxide was also prepared using the same method at different temperatures. The degree of 100 ◦C was selected for synthesizing of ZnO-GO quasi core-shell (zinc oxide as a core and few layer of graphene oxide as a shell). The particle size was 15±2 nm in all samples. In both processes, oxygen was the main reason for the connection between the core and the shell. Unlike chemical process that has all kind of functions in electrolysis process, one kind of function was produced and confirmed by FTIR. XRD patterns also... 

The goal of this study is synthesis of nanocoating on basis of ZnO by Sol-Gel method and evaluation of their antibacterial and photocatalyst properties changes by different values of TiO2. For this purpose in both method of synthesis contents of TiO2 hase been changed from 0-25 molar percent. Dip coat method has been used for coating from sol with 1.4 mm/s withdrawal speed and 2 minute immersion time. After each step of coating samples has been dried at 150oC for 10 minute and for increasing thickness this process has been repeated 4 times. In first method zinc acetate dihydrate in 0.1 M final concentration and titanium tetraisopropoxide are sol precursors at in situ way of synthesis. In... 

In this project, the photoelectrochemical properties of ZnO nanostructures modified by CdS and Graphene was studied. Firs, titanium foil was cut into rectangular shape with 1cm width and 3 cm length, cleaned by rinsing in acetone and ethanol and annealed at 4000C for an hour. As a result, a thin layer of titanium oxide was formed on Ti sheet. Then a layer of grapheme oxide was deposited on substrate using Electrophoretic deposition (EPD). After that, ZnO nanostructure was deposited on the TiO2 substrate using Electropulsation (EP) with 20 consecutive pulse followed by 3 minutes Electrodeposition (ED). Using SEM analysis, the morphology of ZnO was determined to be nanopetals in which the... 

There are many archeological sites, historic building monuments and inscriptions in Iran and other countries in the world which have been damaged by environmental as well as biological causes. Lichens are one of the biological causes which, through their growth, bring about change and damage to the stones. Different methods, each of which has both advantages and disadvantages, have been used in order to deal with the problem. Since there are many historic buildings in our country which have been damaged by different biological causes including the lichens, doing a research on the topic seems to be quite significant and necessary. The Persepolis is among one of the most important historic... 

Photocatalysts are compounds that can perform oxidation and reductions in the presence of light. One of the most known applications for photocatalyst is degrading organic contaminants in wastewater and making them harmless to the environment.In this project, a magnetic photocatalyst based on Fe3O4@ZnO/N-RGO has been synthesized and characterized with FT-IR, FE-SEM and EDS, XRD, and TGA. Moreover, photocatalytic dye degradation reactions for Rhodamine B, Methylene Blue, and Methyl Orange have been investigated and compared in the presence of Fe3O4@ZnO/N-RGO, Fe3O4@ZnO/RGO, Fe3O4@ZnO, and ZnO. Furthermore, the performance of the photocatalyst has been studied for 5 consecutive reactions and... 

The aim of conducting this research is to study, fabrication and photocatalytic application of electrospun ZnO-based composite nanofibers. One of the most important challenges is to apply photocatalyst under solar irradiation and improve its activity for pollutant degradation. ZnO is a wide band gap semiconductor, hence, it is not active under the visible light. In Iran, we have at least 300 sunny days in a year. Therefore, fabrication and application of photocatalytic material with activity under the sunlight which contains 47% of visible light is so vital in our country. Since CuO is a visible light active photocatalyst and its interface with ZnO forms a type I heterojunction, this... 

Herein, we report an efficient one-pot four-component reaction of commercially available 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds, aromatic aldehydes, amines, and nitromethane in the presence of ZnO nanoparticles, which leads to highly substituted pyrroles in moderate to good yields. A mild and efficient tandem process for the synthesis of highly substituted α-pyrones starting from 2-arylacetic acid of high com-mercial availability has been developed. The synthesis is based on the Knoevenagel condensation of 1,3-cyclohexadiones to various β-keto-Esters, followed by lactonization in the presence of 20 mol% ZnO as a nanocatalyst. Moderate to high yields, easily available and less expensive starting materials... 

We demonstrated efficient direct electron transfer from the enzyme glucose oxidase to vertically aligned gold nanorods with a diameter of ~160 nm and a length of ~2 μm that are covalently linkage to a 3-dimensional network of reduced graphene oxide nanosheets. The assembly can be prepared by a 2-step electrochemical procedure. This hybrid structure holds the enzyme in a favorable position while retaining its functionality that ultimately provides enhanced performance for enzymatic sensing of glucose without utilizing mediators. The nanorod assembly was applied to the voltammetric detection of glucose. Figures of merit include an electrochemical sensitivity of 12 µA⋅mM-1⋅cm-2 (obtained from... 

The aim of this research is to make a hierarchical zeolite catalyst as a basis for photocatalytic removal reactions of organic pollutants including dyes and drugs. The three main parts of this thesis deal with preparing the photocatalyst, performing the characterization test and investigating the reaction in different operating conditions. To prepare zeolite, first an organic molecule was synthesized to increase the diameter of the holes and it was used along with the rest of the precursors in the hydrothermal method. To increase the efficiency of photocatalytic reactions, the silver element was deposited on the ZnO / zeolite catalyst by photodeposition method and its characteristics were... 

Zinc oxide is a wide band gap semiconductor material with wide applications as conductive oxides used in electro-optical devices. Thin films of doped zinc oxide (e.g. Al:ZnO, B:ZnO) are already used in thin-film solar cell technologies as electrodes. Chemical bath deposition (CBD) is a promising method for fabricating transparent and conductive ZnO layers at low temperatures (<100 °C) on nonconductive and temperature-sensitive substrates. Having a natural crystal habit, ZnO readily grows rod-like arrays when grown in an aqueous solution by CBD, posing challenges when attempting to deposit dense and conductive layers. The purpose of this study was to deposit dense and conductive zinc oxide... 

ZnO nano particles and mordnite zeolite nano particles were prepared by precipitation method and hydrothermal method,respectively. The influence of solvent and surfactant in ZnO nano particles synthesis were studied to reform the structure of nano particles.These nano particles were based on different supports to improve and enhance their photocatalytic activities. Synthesized catalysts characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform-infra red spectra (FTIR), UV-Vis spectroscopy and BET techniques. To investigated photocatalytic activity of the synthesized catalysts under UV irradiation, they were used to degradation bio-environmental... 

Polycarbonate (PC) and polyethylene-terephthalate (PET) are important engineering thermoplastics. During last decades these polymers and their blends have been studied extensively due to their wide range of applications. Blends of PET and PC combine mechanical properties and chemical resistance together, which make applicable in various components such as automotive, electrical and of medical parts. It has been accepted that PET/PC immiscible blends are subjected to transesterification reactions during thermal processing, which produces PET-PC copolymer chains. In fact, scissioning and substitution of ester/carbonate functional groups of PC and PET at the interface, transforms the initial... 

ZnO semiconductor has a wide band gap (3.3eV) and high electron mobility, making it a possible candidate for an effective structure-based Dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) semiconductor. Efficiency of DSSC based on ZnO is lower than TiO2 due to its low chemical satability. It is well known that the energy conversion efficiency of DSSC depends on the electron transport in the photoelectrode so in this investigation we fabricated high transport photoelectrode by doping Al in ZnO nanostructures. DSSC based on Al doped and undoped ZnO nanosheet synthesized by electrochemical deposition. Current density-voltage (J-V) characterizations indicate that Al-doping in ZnO crystal structure increases... 

In this thesis, first, random lasing in a three dimensional disordered medium has been simulated using FDTD method and some properties of random lasers which were observed by others in the previous experiments have theoretically been shown. Our simulation results show that when the density of particles increases to an upper limit, the intensity of lasing modes is enhanced. Also, the effects of pumping rate and particle size on the number of lasing modes and their intensity are studied. Lasing threshold of laser modes in different disordered systems is calculated and it is shown that by an appropriate selection of the central frequency of gain line-shape, the output power intensity of random... 

In this study, transparent conductive thin film of Aluminum doped ZnO (ZnO:Al) have been fabricated thorough RF sputtering. The main goal of fabrication of these layers is achieving thin films with minimum resistivity and maximum optical transparency in visible range of spectrum employing as transparent electrodes and buffer layer at the entirely oxidized solar cells. To achieve the suitable structure, various parameters including pressure, power and the thickness of the deposition and annealing on morphologies of thin film has been investigated. According to these results, thin film of ZnO:Al has the transparency of 80% in the visible light range . Doping of ZnO with Aluminum caused... 

Hexavalent chromium ion (Cr+6) is a very toxic type of heavy metal in industrial effluents which is not biodegradable and accumulates in the human body that can cause genetic mutations and cancer. The aim of this project is to investigate the effect of wavelength and intensity of appropriate light on the reaction rate of photocatalytic reduction of Cr+6 ion to less toxic materials. In this project, we first designed and constructed a photocatalytic reactor to investigate the effect of wavelength and intensity of incident light on the reaction rate. The home-made photocatalytic reactor consisted of 120 LEDs in 12 different wavelengths, which has ability to control the intensity and... 

According to the growth in the world population and the decrease in fossil fuels resources and also according to the pollution caused by these unrenewable resources, using hydrogen as an alternative energy resource seems to be unavoidable. In the past decades, semi-conductor metal oxides were being used widely in the energy domain of study, due to their appropriate band gap in the ultra-violet and visible spectra. Among these metal oxides, ZnO has been under special attention because of its electron mobility and its reasonable production cost and also its friendliness to environment. But the high band gap of ZnO (3.2 eV) has impeded its use in visible light spectrum. In this project,...