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We report on a simple synthesis of ZnO nanowires by calcination of zinc acetate. The effect of calcination temperature and cooling route on the antibacterial and photocatalytic properties is demonstrated by varying the size and surface area of the nanowires. The decrease of the calcination temperature followed by a rapid cooling procedure leads to a smaller size and larger surface area of the nanowires. ZnO nanowires are found to be effective against the growth of E. coli at the microgram level. In addition, the photocatalytic activity of the synthesized ZnO nanowires is demonstrated by the successful degradation of the organic dye methylene blue.

Various theoretical and experimental methods are utilized to investigate the thermal conductivity of nanostructured materials; this is a critical parameter to increase performance of thermoelectric devices. Among these methods, equilibrium molecular dynamics (EMD) is an accurate technique to predict lattice thermal conductivity. In this study, by means of systematic EMD simulations, thermal conductivity of bulk Si-Ge structures (pristine, alloy and superlattice) and their nanostructured one dimensional forms with square and circular cross-section geometries (asymmetric and symmetric) are calculated for different crystallographic directions. A comprehensive temperature analysis is evaluated for selected structures as well. The results show that one-dimensional structures are superior candidates in terms of their low lattice thermal conductivity and thermal conductivity tunability by nanostructuring, such as by diameter modulation, interface roughness, periodicity and number of interfaces. We find that thermal conductivity decreases with smaller diameters or cross section areas. Furthermore, interface roughness decreases thermal conductivity with a profound impact. Moreover, we predicted that there is a specific periodicity that gives minimum thermal conductivity in symmetric superlattice structures. The decreasing thermal conductivity is due to the reducing phonon movement in the system due to the effect of the number of interfaces that determine regimes of ballistic and wave transport phenomena. In some nanostructures, such as nanowire superlattices, thermal conductivity of the Si/Ge system can be reduced to nearly twice that of an amorphous silicon thermal conductivity. Additionally, it is found that one crystal orientation, < 100 >, is better than the < 111 > crystal orientation in one-dimensional and bulk SiGe systems. Our results clearly point out the importance of lattice thermal conductivity engineering in bulk and nanostructures to produce high-performance thermoelectric materials.

Scopus İndeksli Yayınlar Koleksiyonu / Scopus Indexed Publications Collection

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