ZnO-based antimicrobial coatings for biomedical applications.

Rapid transmission of infectious microorganisms such as viruses and bacteria through person-to-person contact has contributed significantly to global health issues. The high survivability of these microorganisms on the material surface enumerates their transmissibility to the susceptible patient. The antimicrobial coating has emerged as one of the most interesting technologies to prevent growth and subsequently kill disease-causing microorganisms. It offers an effective solution a non-invasive, low-cost, easy-in-use, side-effect-free, and environmentally friendly method to prevent nosocomial infection. Among antimicrobial coating, zinc oxide (ZnO) stands as one of the excellent materials owing to zero toxicity, high biocompatibility to human organs, good stability, high abundancy, affordability, and high photocatalytic performance to kill various infectious pathogens. Therefore, this review provides the latest research progress on advanced applications of ZnO nanostructure-based antibacterial coatings for medical devices, biomedical applications, and health care facilities. Finally, future challenges and clinical practices of ZnO-based antibacterial coating are addressed.

ZnO nanostructured materials for emerging solar cell applications.

Zinc oxide (ZnO) has been considered as one of the potential materials in solar cell applications, owing to its relatively high conductivity, electron mobility, stability against photo-corrosion and availability at low-cost. Different structures of ZnO materials have been engineered at the nanoscale, and then applied on the conducting substrate as a photoanode. On the other hand, the ZnO nanomaterials directly grown on the substrate have been attractive due to their unique electron pathways, which suppress the influence of surface states typically found in the former case. Herein, we review the recent progress of ZnO nanostructured materials in emerging solar cell applications, such as sensitized and heterojunction architectures, including those embedded with promising perovskite materials. The remarkable advancement in each solar cell architecture is highlighted towards achieving high power conversion efficiency and operational stability. We also discuss the foremost bottleneck for further improvements and the future outlook for large-scale practical applications.