Fabrication of well-ordered CuO nanowire arrays by direct oxidation of sputter-deposited Cu3N film

Well-ordered CuO nanowire arrays were prepared through directly annealing the sputter-deposited Cu3N film at 300 °C for 90 min in atmosphere. The XRD and XPS results indicate that the Cu3N film completely changes to CuO without any other oxides such as after annealed. XPS results also indicate that there is also residual nitrogen in the CuO nanowire arrays. The FE-SEM and TEM images show that the CuO nanowire arrays are vertical to the substrate with a diameter of about 20 nm and a length of ∼ 0.6 μm. The growth mechanism is also discussed preliminarily.