Tailoring the optical properties of ZnO nano-layers and their effect on in vitro biocompatibility
09/11/2015
Authors
V. Roge, A. Georgantzopoulou, K. Mehennaoui, I. Fechete, F. Garin, A. Dinia, A. C. Gutleb, and D. Lenoble
Reference
RSC Advances, vol. 5, no. 118, pp. 97635-97647, 2015
Description
This paper highlights the use of Al2O3 and SnO2 films as protecting layers to tailor the optical properties and biocompatibility of ZnO nano-films. ZnO, ZnO/Al2O3 and ZnO/SnO2 nano-films have been deposited inside 3-dimensional (3D) structures such as anodic aluminium oxide (AAO) membranes via a gas phase atomic layer deposition (ALD) process. We show that ZnO/Al2O3 multilayers exhibit improved excitonic photoluminescence properties compared to ZnO only, whereas ZnO/SnO2 multilayers quench the near band edge emission signal. In addition, in vitro experiments on Caco-2/TC7 cells and Vibrio fischeri bacteria reveal that ZnO/Al2O3 and ZnO/SnO2 multilayers display enhanced biocompatibility in liquid media compared to ZnO. We attribute the improvement of the biocompatibility to a lower dissolution of the ZnO nano-film when protected by Al2O3 or SnO2.
