Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Optics and Laser Technology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/optlastec Full length article An electron beam induced study in fuorine doped ZnO nanostructures for optical fltering and frequency conversion application Albin Antony a , P. Poornesh a, ⁎ , K. Ozga b , P. Rakus b , A. Wojciechowski b , I.V. Kityk b , Ganesh Sanjeev c , Vikash Chandra Petwal d , Vijay Pal Verma d , Jishnu Dwivedi d a Department of Physics, Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, Karnataka, 576104, India b Institute of Optoelectronics and Measuring Systems, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czestochowa University of Technology, ArmiiKrajowej 17, PL-42-201 Czestochowa, Poland c Department of Physics, Mangalore University, Mangalore, Karnataka 574199, India d Industrial Accelerator Section, PSIAD, Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore 452012, M.P., India HIGHLIGHTS • FZO nanostructures were treated with 8 MeV e-beam line at dosages 0 to 20 kGy. • XPS conveys that e-beam treatment suppresses the generation of defects in FZO. • Non radiative recombination dominates over radiative recombinations in FZO. • Nonlinear scattering mechanism becomes dominant due to photo bleaching efect. ARTICLEINFO Keywords: FZO nanostructures Electron beam irradiation Third harmonic generation ABSTRACT Infuence of high energy electron beam treatment on fuorine doped ZnO (FZO) nanostructures and its role in modifying structural, optical, morphological and nonlinear optical properties was studied. FZO nanostructures were grown with diferent fuorine concentration using an air assisted chemical spray pyrolysis technique. The prepared nanostructures were treated with 8 MeV electron beam line at pre-determined dosages (5 kGy. 10 kGy, 15 kGy and 20 kGy). Compositional and chemical state analysis of FZO flms were analyzed by x-ray photo- electron spectroscopy (XPS). The XPS analysis conveys that the percentage area ratio of O 1s core level spectra which attributes to oxygen vacancy defects are reduced from 28.9% to 13.7% which endorses a fact that e-beam treatment suppresses the generation of oxygen related defects. The glancing angle X-ray difraction (GAXRD) study confrms that the deposited flms exhibit a single phase which point towards the higher order structural stability and phase purity of FZO nanostructures in intense radiation environment. The ambient temperature PL spectra show quenching of radiative defect centers upon electron beam irradiation which infers that non ra- diative recombination predominates the radiative recombination in the nanostructures upon e-beam treatment. Open aperture Z-scan analysis shows a magnitude of nonlinear absorption coefcient β ef in the order of 10 −1 esu. Enhanced third harmonic generation signal (THG) shown by the flms due to photoexcitation and relaxation process endorses the credibility of the grown flms for application as UV light emitters. 1. Introduction The manipulations of physical and chemical properties of semi- conductor based nanostructured materials has gained recently intense research interest in the near time due to their importance in tailoring the physical-chemical features. As an abundant, nontoxic and widely used functional semiconductor, Zinc oxide is still in its accelerating phase owing to its applications in photovoltaics, thermoelectric, pho- tonics, gas sensors and so on [1–6]. Despite of its excellent physical and chemical properties and remarkable advances in synthesizing methods, successful implementation of ZnO nanostructure prevailingly as nano- flms in order to meet the present demand for nonlinear optical devices are still challenging. In an efort to circumvent this issue substantial amount of researches are going on to further improve and tuning of the https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optlastec.2019.03.003 Received 23 December 2018; Received in revised form 14 February 2019; Accepted 2 March 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: poornesh.p@manipal.edu (P. Poornesh). Optics and Laser Technology 115 (2019) 519–530 0030-3992/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T