A recent paper reported that intense emissions with a range of wavelengths over a wide spectral range, from ultraviolet to infrared light, might be possible by sheathing MgO nanorods with a semiconducting material with an optimal sheath thickness. In addition, the paper hypothesized that an ultraintense short-wavelength emission could be obtained by sheathing MgO nanorods with a ~17 nm ZnO thin film in the paper. In this study, we found that the intensity ratio of the near-band edge emission to the deep level emission (I(NBE)/I(DL)) of the MgO-core/ZnO-shell nanorods with a mean shell layer thickness of 17 nm was as high as ~30, whereas the I(NBE)/I(DL) ratio of the bare-MgO nanorods was 0. This near-band edge emission intensity enhancement by sheathing the MgO nanorods with ZnO is by far more significant than that by sheathing the ZnO nanorods with other materials including MgO. This is because subwavelength optical resonance cavities form in the MgO-core/ZnO-shell nanorods with faceted surfaces, whereas they do not form in the ZnO-core/MgO (or other material)-shell nanorods with no faceted surfaces.
© 2012 American Chemical Society