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Annealing temperature-dependent morphology, structure, and optical properties of well-aligned ZnO nanowire arrays

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Abstract

In this paper, using a facile and low-cost chemical bath deposition route, well-aligned zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowire arrays (ZNWAs) were grown on the silica glass substrate at low temperature. The as-grown ZNWAs were then annealed at different temperatures from 400 to 800 °C, their morphology, crystalline structure and optical properties were analyzed in detail. The results showed that both the average diameter and length of ZnO nanowires increased with raising annealing temperature, when annealing temperature was 600 °C, the ZnO nanowires had the best crystallization quality and minimum Urbach energy, near band edge (NBE) emission peak increased sharply. In addition, when the annealing temperature was up to 800 °C, many adjacent ZnO nanowires bonded together in the ZNWAs, a substantial increase of their lattice disorder induced by too high annealing temperature, a sharp decrease in optical transmission of the ZNWAs in the visible region was found, their Urbach energy increased dramatically and crystallization quality became poor.

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Acknowledgements

This work is partially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province (Grant No. 2017JM6090), the Natural Science Foundation of the Education Bureau of Shaanxi Province, China (Grant No. 16JK1135), the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi University of Technology (Grant No. SLGQD-2017-05), and the Open Foundation of State Key Laboratory of Electronic Thin Films and Integrated Devices (Grant No. KFJJ201602).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physics and Telecommunication Engineering, Shaanxi University of Technology, Hanzhong, 723001, People’s Republic of China

    Yajie Ren, Zhaolin Yuan, Jianlin Fan, Wendeng Huang & Chunjiang Shuai

  2. Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Shaanxi University of Technology, Hanzhong, 723001, People’s Republic of China

    Zhaolin Yuan & Wendeng Huang

  3. State Key Laboratory of Electronic Thin Films and Integrated Devices, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, People’s Republic of China

    Zhaolin Yuan

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  1. Yajie Ren
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Correspondence to Zhaolin Yuan.

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Ren, Y., Yuan, Z., Fan, J. et al. Annealing temperature-dependent morphology, structure, and optical properties of well-aligned ZnO nanowire arrays. Appl. Phys. A 124, 655 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-018-2081-8

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