Editorial Nanostructured Optoelectronics: Materials …downloads.hindawi.com/journals/jnm/2016/2051908.pdfEditorial Nanostructured Optoelectronics: Materials and Devices HieuP.T.Nguyen,

EditorialNanostructured Optoelectronics: Materials and Devices

Hieu P. T. Nguyen,1 Shamsul Arafin,2 J. Piao,3 and Tran Viet Cuong4

1Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ 07102, USA2Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA3Epitaxial Laboratory, Inc., Dix Hills, NY 11746, USA4Department of Solid State Physics, University of Science, Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Correspondence should be addressed to Hieu P. T. Nguyen; [email protected]

Received 11 July 2016; Accepted 11 July 2016

Copyright © 2016 Hieu P. T. Nguyen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons AttributionLicense, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properlycited.

Theuse of nanostructurematerials for optoelectronic devices,including light-emitting diodes (LEDs), laser diodes, pho-todetectors, and solar cells, has recently attracted consider-able attention due to their unique geometry. Nanostructuresin small dimensions can be perfectly integrated into avariety of technological platforms, offering novel physical andchemical properties for the high performance optoelectronicdevices. The exploitation of new nanostructures and theiroptical and electrical properties is necessary for their emerg-ing practical device applications.

This special issue contains six papers, presenting somerecent advances in the theoretical calculation, synthesis, char-acterization, and application of such novel nanostructures.

Recently, natural dyes have been widely studied as poten-tial sensitizers for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) dueto their cost efficiency, nontoxicity, and complete biodegra-dation. In “Photoactive Layer of DSSCs Based on NaturalDyes: A Study of Experiment and Theory,” Y. Li et al.investigated, both theoretically and experimentally, threenatural dyes for DSSCs which were extracted from naturalplants, including Forsythia suspensa, Herba Violae, and Cornleaf. The authors reported that such natural dyes exhibitwide absorption regionwhich covers almost the whole visiblespectrum. The highest photoelectronic conversion efficiencyfor these natural dyes was recorded to be 0.96% with opencircuit voltage of 0.66V and short circuit current density of1.97mAcm−2 which is promising for future biophotovoltaicsapplications.

Among these novel nanostructures, recent rapid advancesin research involving two-dimensional (2D) layered nanoma-terials andnanoplasmonics could pave theway for developing

next-generation optoelectronic and photonic devices. Fur-thermore, the use of such 2D materials as a buffer layer forthe growth of light-emitting III-V compound semiconductorsby the so-called van der Waals epitaxy method has openedup a new route of heteroepitaxy, mitigating a lot of growth-related technological challenges. As an effort, this specialissue features a theoretical paper relating to emerging 2Dmaterials. X. Hu and F. Meng in “First-Principle Study onthe Interaction between Fe and Trivacancy in Graphene”have reported the interaction between iron metal and mono-layer graphene. In fact, this study has described a detailedinvestigation on the structural and electronic properties ofgraphene with vacancies as well as the advantages offered byhaving these vacancies on the graphene surface.These resultscertainly provide insights to engineer the electrical propertiesof graphene through defect addition andmanipulation, beinguseful for industrial semiconductor applications such as thephotocatalytic technology and graphene-based electronics.

In another paper, W. Sukkabot theoretically studied theimpact of structure shapes on the electron-hole exchangeinteraction in core/shell nanostructure semiconductors. Thestudy focused on the electron-hole exchange interaction inthe morphological transformation of CdSe/ZnS core/shellnanodisk to CdSe/ZnS core/shell nanorod using atomistictight-binding theory and a configuration interaction descrip-tion. The aspect ratios were successfully used to study thestructural and optical properties of such nanostructures.The single-particle and excitonic gaps are believed to bedecreased by changing from disk to rod shapes. The authorsconcluded that light hole is suggested to be used for quantuminformation instead of a heavy hole. This study contributes

Hindawi Publishing CorporationJournal of NanomaterialsVolume 2016, Article ID 2051908, 2 pageshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/2051908

2 Journal of Nanomaterials

important information to the design of high performanceII-VI semiconductor nanocrystals for optoelectronic applica-tions.

Y. J. Park et al. reported their study on the enhancedlight extraction efficiency of LEDs by employing two ZnOnanostructures. The experiments were performed on twotypes of nanostructures including one-dimensional nanorodsand two-dimensional nanosheets which were grown directlyon top of LEDs. The formation of surface texturing on LEDswith ZnO nanorods offers increased escape cone and surfacescattering, resulting in the enhancement of light outputpower of 30% compared to conventional LEDs without usingZnO nanostructures. However, due to the increased internalreflection and light absorption in ZnO nanosheets, LEDsusing nanosheet structures have lower light output efficiencycompared to the conventional one. The employment of ZnOnanorods shows promising approach for the enhanced outputpower of LEDs. More importantly, LED devices are notseverely suffering fromdegradation of electrical properties byusing ZnO nanorods.

In the paper “A Method to Control Dynamic Errorsof the Stylus-Based Probing System for the Surface FormMeasurement of Microstructures,” H. Fang et al. proposeda simple and cost-effective method to control dynamicerrors of the stylus-based probing system on measuring thesurface form of microstructures. The dynamic errors werenumerically simulated and suggested that the scanning speedand initial position of the measured specimen directly affectthe dynamic errors. The authors proposed a solution toenhance the form measurement accuracy of microstructuresby using kinematical models to predict the influence of themeasurement setup on dynamic performance. The dynamicerrors, therefore, can be controlled by properly choosingthe optimal scanning speed and the initial position of themeasured samples.

V. R. Balaji et al. presented a novel design of twelve-channel Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM)demultiplexer using the two-dimensional photonic crystal(2D PC) square resonant cavity. The rod radius and wave-length were optimized by linear regression analysis. Theauthors claimed that their DWDM exhibits high accuracy of95%with an average quality factor close to 8000. Importantly,the proposed PC based demultiplexer has small figure sizeand is perfectly applied in integrated optics.

Acknowledgments

The Guest Editors would like to thank all authors for theircontributions to this special issue. They would also like toacknowledge reviewers of this special issue for their time andcomments.

Hieu P. T. NguyenShamsul Arafin

J. PiaoTran Viet Cuong

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Editorial Nanostructured Optoelectronics: Materials …downloads.hindawi.com/journals/jnm/2016/2051908.pdfEditorial Nanostructured Optoelectronics: Materials and Devices HieuP.T.Nguyen,