Investigations on the surface plasmonic effect of pulsed laser dispersed (PLDi) NiTi and CuAl alloy nanoparticles on hydrothermally grown ZnO nanorods

In this work, we have demonstrated the photoluminescence enhancement of metal alloy (NiTi and CuAl) coated ZnO nanorods. The ZnO nanorods were grown by the conventional hydrothermal process on which the alloy nanoparticles (NiTi/ CuAl) were dispersed through pulsed laser deposition technique. An enhancement in photoluminescence was observed because of metal alloy nanoparticles were dispersed on ZnO nanorods. The maximum achieved UV enhancement with a factor of similar to 8 and defect suppression with a factor of similar to 2.4 were observed for NiTi coated ZnO nanorods. However, CuAl coated ZnO nanorods showed relatively less enhancement (similar to 4.3) and improved suppression (similar to 4.1) compared to NiTi coated ZnO nanorods. Such emission enhancement and defect suppression can be attributed to the resonant coupling between electron-hole pair and carrier transfer between metal and ZnO nanorods. Hence, the metal-ZnO interface plays an important role towards the enhancement factors. Therefore, we can claim that the Earth-abundant metal alloy coated ZnO nanorods show comparable surface plasmon resonance effect in comparison to the noble metals coated ZnO nanostructures.