I have prepared ZnO nanorod powder and I have to do Current density-Voltage (J-V) measurement. Can anyone suggest me how sample preparation is done from ZnO nanorod powder
A good ohmic contact between your ZnO and testing electrode seems important.
you cannot make a film using nano powders as suggested previously.
Definitely you need a good contacting electrode as suggested by Zhiqiang Yu,
Kindly note it is difficult hold a single nano rod and put electrodes on either side.
So we see that ,it is practically impossible to do electrical measurements on powder particles/nano rods. You can rather press the powders into a pellet, and then do the electrical measurements on the pellet.
Pellet preparation
Firstly grind you prepared ZnO power thoroughly using a pestle and mortar.
Now you have to employ the standard ceramic processing technique to prepare a pellet, which can be circular (upto 10 mm dia.) and 1 to 1.5 mm in thickness. Both the faces of the circular pellet should be smooth and parallel. and both the faces need to be electroded by silver paint.
since you want to do I-V, and probably vary the voltage to a high value say 100 volts, then I would suggest try to make a thinner pellet (less than 1 mm say 0.5 to 0.6 mm). In case you have prepared a thicker pellet, you can polish it down to a lower thickness.
consult anyone who is preparing ceramics and working in this field.
1) Prepare poly vinyl alcohol PVA (1.5%) solution in water, mix thoroughly this is a binder material. Take two or three drops of this solution and mix it with your ZnO powder (10 grams).Thoroughly mixture the powder so that fine granules are formed. Dry it up.
2) Take a hydraulic press and press the PVA mixed powder, and form ellets.
3) Now sinter the pellets at different temperatures (800,900, 1000) and see that you obtain a good density. Measure the density of the pellets using Archimedes principle.
4) Finally electrode the sintered pieces and do you IV measurements.
K. Sreenivas
Thank you all for your valuable suggestions. I will follow the procedure mentioned by you.
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