Surface morphology evolution with fabrication parameters of ZnO nanowires toward emission properties enhancement

ZnO nanowire (NW) arrays were successfully grown on pre-seeded indium Tin oxide (ITO)-coated glass substrate using hydrothermal synthesis. Herein, the effects of ZnO seed layer density on the performance of ZnO NWs were investigated in details. The orientation and the dimension of ZnO NWs were found to depend on seeded substrate density as shown by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) micrographs which revealed that the typical morphology with the most uniform size can be obtained. From the X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurement, it can be seen that hexagonal c -axis oriented NWs were grown. The resonant Raman scattering was also investigated in details. It confirmed the wurtzite structure of the NW arrays and expected for good optical properties. The optical band gaps of synthesized ZnO NWs were found to decrease comparing to bulk ZnO and as function of seed layer. The photoluminescence (PL) spectra at room temperature have shown strong UV excitonic emission and weak deep-level emissions which reveal that the as-grown NW arrays have good optical properties with limited deep-level defects.