Effect of growth conditions on zinc oxide nanowire array synthesized on Si (100) without catalyst

A uniformly distributed ZnO nanowire array has been grown on silicon (100) substrates by catalyst-free chemical vapor transport and condensation. The effect of growth conditions including source heating temperature, substrate temperature, and gas flow rate on growth properties of ZnO nanowire arrays are studied. Scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and room temperature photoluminescence are employed to study the structural features and optical properties of the samples. The results show a correlation among experimental growth parameters. There is a zone for substrate temperature, by controlling gas flow rate, that uniformly distributed and well aligned ZnO nanowire arrays can be grown. Also, experiments indicate that ZnO nanowire arrays with different diameter along their length have been formed under various growth conditions in the same distance from source material. It is found that supersaturation is a crucial parameter determining the growth behavior of ZnO nanowire arrays. The growth mechanism of ZnO nanowires is discussed. The room temperature photoluminescence spectrums of ZnO nanowire array show two emission bands. One is the exciton emission band (centered at 380 nm) and the other is a broad visible emission band centered at around 490 nm. As the substrate temperature decreases, the intensity of UV emission increases while the intensity of visible emission peak decreases.