Abstract
Nanophotonic semiconductor crystals have shown great potential in the optoelectronic devices field owing to their unique quantum confinement effect and high luminescence emission spectra. Here, a novel highly luminescent Zn1-xLuxO (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.07) semiconducting oxide quantum dot (SOQDs) has been developed by 3-Mercapto-N-nonylpropionamide assisted microwave approach for the first time. The doping of lutetium, Lu, atoms in the cites of Zn for ZnO hexagonal structures instigated an increase of the crystallite size and the lattice constant parameters. The inclusion of Lu atoms in the ZnO nanophotonic crystals resulted in the formation of monodisperse nanoparticles with mean diameters ranged from 10 nm to 23 nm. The Lu-doped ZnO QDs caused a shift of the absorption spectrum toward the visible spectrum, where the optical band gaps reduced from 3.5 eV to 2.7 eV. The doped ZnO nanophotonic QDs with Lu atoms embarked the increase of the luminescent intensity by 10 times with sharp emission band width. The quantum yields increased from 14 % to 89 % where the Lu atoms acts as population trap levels for the excited electrons of the ZnO conduction band, which resulted in the emergence of high intense lasing light. These remarkable characteristics may open the avenue to use the Zn1-xLuxO semiconducting photonic quantum dot for the fabrication of highly luminescent laser diode.