Structural and optical properties of ZnO nanostructures grown on silicon substrate by thermal evaporation process

Two types of one-dimensional ZnO nanostructures have been synthesized on silicon substrate by the thermal evaporation of metallic zinc powder in the presence of oxygen without the use of any catalyst or additives. Detailed structural analysis revealed that the formed ZnO nanostructures are single crystalline with wurtzite hexagonal phase and grow along the [0001] direction in preference. Presence of a sharp and strong, optical phonon Raman-active E2 (high) mode and suppressed E1 (LO) mode in the Raman spectra, in both the cases, confirmed the good crystallinity with the wurtzite hexagonal phase for the as-grown products. A sharp and dominant near band edge emission with a suppressed green emission is observed from the as-synthesized nanostructures which affirmed the good optical properties with very less structural defects for the grown nanostructures.