Surface and physical characteristics of ZnO:Al nanostructured films

Structural and surface characterizations of the ZnO:Al nanostructured films were achieved by means of x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, atomic force microscope, and nanoindentation measurements. The films exhibited hydrophobic behavior with contact angles of about 133.2°–142.7°, and a decrease in the hardness and Young’s modulus with decreasing indentation depths. Buckling behavior took place during the indentation process, and the fracture strength of the films was also investigated. The results show that the phase transformation from zinc blende to wurtzite structure. Also, it should be correlated with belongs to chairtype Peierls distortion with up to 38° tilting (001) rock-salt structure along the (1¯21¯0) plane and followed tilting along the (101¯0) plane by about 32° for a fair match with (101¯0) Zn. A nanogenerator with ZnO nanorods was then fabricated to define its piezoelectric characteristics. The power density per unit substrate area is about 18.3 μW/mm2.