Morphology and property tuning in ZnO–Ni hybrid metamaterials in vertically aligned nanocomposite (VAN) form

Journal Article · Thu May 01 00:00:00 EDT 2025 · Nanoscale Advances

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1039/d5na00207a· OSTI ID:2563766

Bhatt, Nirali A. ^[1]; Quigley, Lizabeth ^[1]; Zhou, Shiyu ^[1]; Gnanasabai, Anirutha ^[1]; Choudhury, Abhijeet ^[1]; Zhang, Yizhi ^[1]; Shen, Jianan ^[1]; Lu, Juanjuan ^[1]; Siddiqui, Aleem ^[2]; Sarma, Raktim ^[2]; Wang, Haiyan ^[1]

---

1. Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN (United States)
2. Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

ZnO thin films have attracted significant interest in the past decades owing to their unique wide band gap properties, piezoelectric properties, non-linearity and plasmonic properties. Recent efforts have been made in coupling ZnO with secondary phases to enhance its functionalities, such as Au–ZnO nanocomposite thin films with tunable optical and plasmonic properties. In this work, magnetic nanostructures of Ni are incorporated in ZnO thin films in a vertically aligned nanocomposite (VAN) form to couple magnetic and plasmonic response in a complex hybrid metamaterial system. Nickel (Ni) is of interest due to its ferromagnetic and plasmonic properties along with gold (Au) which is also plasmonic. Therefore, two approaches, namely, tuning of the deposition pressure and use of a ZnO–Au seeding layer have been attempted to achieve unique Ni nanostructures in addition to tuning of the microstructure. Together, both approaches demonstrate a range of microstructures such as core–shell, nanodisk, nanocup, and nanocube-like morphologies not previously attempted. Additionally, there is effective tuning of properties. Specifically, the seeding layer thickness causes hyperbolic behavior as well as redshift in the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) wavelength. The addition of the ZnO–Au seeding layer directly influences the optical properties. Plus, regardless of the different approaches, the films demonstrate magnetic anisotropy based on the composition and microstructure of the film which impacted the saturation magnetization and coercivity. This study demonstrates the potential of ZnO-based complex hybrid metamaterials with coupled electro-magneto-optical properties for integrated photonic devices.

• Research Organization: Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN (United States); Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE; USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program; USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Scientific User Facilities (SUF)
• Grant/Contract Number: NA0003525; SC0020077
• OSTI ID: 2563766
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 2584146
• Journal Information: Nanoscale Advances, Journal Name: Nanoscale Advances Journal Issue: 11 Vol. 7; ISSN 2516-0230
• Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English