Oral presentation given in the IEEE Sensors 2017 celebrated in Glasgow, where I talked about the importance of monitoring UV doses in humans for preventing health issues.
In this interesting talk, I present the synthesis and characterization of ZnO nanowires by vapor phase transport (VPT) technique. The high crystalline quality, long aspect-ratio and sensitivity to UV light of the resulting ZnO nanowires, make them excellent candidates for the development of UV photodetectors. In this regard, we have developed a technique based on non-uniform electric fields to assemble ZnO nanowires at specific places along the receiver substrate, including rigid and flexible substrates (see figure above).
We have synthesis high crystal quality and long aspect ratio ZnO nanowires by vapor-phase transport technique.
The sensitivity of the UV photodetectors based on ZnO nanowires have been analyzed as a function of the UV light intensity, showing a huge photoresponse even under poor UV illumination. The UV photodetector performance has been characterized under hundreds of bending cycles, which confirm the robustness and stability of the flexible UV photodetector for wearable applications.
The NW assembling technology based on dielectrophoresis has demonstrated its potential scalability by successfully fabricating 2x2, 3x3 and 4x4 arrays of UV photodetectors. These results are promising for the fabrication of large scale flexible dosimeters, e.g. for health-care, research and military applications, where UV monitoring is crucial.
ZnO nanowires have demonstrate their suitability for wearable UV dosimeters.