Temperature dependent photoluminescence properties of needle-like ZnO nanostructures deposited on carbon nanotubes

The structural and optical properties of the needle-like ZnO nanostructure grown on the carbon nanotubes (ZnO/CNTs) have been studied by scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and photoluminescence (PL) spectra. It can be seen that there is about tens of nanometers in diameter of the single ZnO nanorod from the SEM picture. The XRD analysis shows that the prepared film is of typical wurtzite hexagonal phase without impurity. Temperature dependence of electronic transitions in the ZnO/CNTs has been investigated by PL in detail. The emission features in near band gap at 10 K reveal a redshift trend compared to ZnO single crystal, which is associated with the strong interfacial connection between ZnO and CNTs. Moreover, the intensities of all transitions in near band gap and visible regions decrease with increasing the temperature but increase with the excitation power. It can be concluded that the combined effect from ZnO and CNTs plays an important role in the PL response. The emission variations with the temperature for the ZnO/CNTs are the result of the electron–phonon interaction and the lattice thermal expansion.