Synthesis of quasi-aligned Si-doped ZnO nanorods on Si substrate

A new multi-step thermal evaporation method was proposed to synthesize quasi-aligned Si-doped ZnO nanorods on Si substrate without introducing any catalysts. The content of Si in ZnO nanorods is about 5 at% from EDS analysis. Every nanorod has a two-step appearance, in which the diameter of the bottom exceeds that of the top. They all have a single-crystal hexagonal structure and grow along the [0 0 0 1] direction. Photoluminescence (PL) of these doped nanorods exhibits a red-shift UV emission peak and an enhanced green emission band, which all are induced by the Si doping.