Basic Properties and Applications of ZnO

This chapter discusses the basic properties and applications of zinc oxide (ZnO). ZnO has attracted much attention within the scientific community as a "future material." ZnO has been widely studied since 1935, with much of current industry and day-to-day lives critically reliant upon this compound. The renewed interest in this material has arisen out of the development of growth technologies for the fabrication of high quality single crystals and epitaxial layers, allowing for the realization of ZnO-based electronic and optoelectronic devices. ZnO has several advantages over gallium nitride (GaN) in the application range however, the most important being its larger exciton binding energy and the ability to grow single crystal substrates. Other favorable aspects of ZnO include its broad chemistry leading to many opportunities for wet chemical etching, low power threshold for optical pumping, radiation hardness, and biocompatibility. Together, these properties of ZnO make it an ideal candidate for a variety of devices ranging from sensors through to ultra-violet laser diodes and nanotechnology-based devices such as displays.