Surface Treatment of Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles by Silica Coating and Evaluation of Their Dispersibility and Photoluminescent Properties

Abstract

We prepared silica-coated ZnO nanoparticles and evaluated the dispersibility and photoluminescent properties by comparing the properties of ZnO nanoparticle dispersion. It was confirmed that the Zeta-potential of the nanoparticles in saline was changed from 1.52 mV to −43.06 mV and the intensity of the exciton emission of ZnO was enhanced around 20 times by silica coating. These results indicated that the silica coating technique was effective for enhancing the dispersibility and controlling the fluorescence quenching of the emission of ZnO. [DOI: 10.1380/ejssnt.2015.451]