Hydrothermal deposition of single crystalline germanium nanorods

Single crystalline germanium nanorods have been prepared via a simple hydrothermal deposition process using Ge and GeO2 as the starting materials under the hydrothermal conditions of 400 °C and 7.1 – 8 MPa. Scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy observations show the diameter of the nanorods ranging from 70 nm to 500 nm and the length greater than 10 μm. X-ray diffraction and high resolution transmission electron microscopy results indicate that the nanorods are mainly composed of single crystalline Ge with cubic diamond structure. The growth process has been proposed as the CuGeO3-assisted growth mechanism.