Zinc oxide nanowires synthesized using a hot tube thermal evaporation under intermediate heating period

Abstract

Zinc oxide nanowires have been synthesized using a hot tube vacuum evaporation method. Essentially, ZnO powder and silicon substrate were placed in upper and lower streams of a horizontal quartz tube, respectively and heated via a furnace up to 960 C for about 1 hour. During the heating process, evaporated ZnO vapour was transported to lower stream and deposited onto the substrate containing Au catalyst at constant pressure of 1 torr. The substrate tilt angles were chosen for 0° and 30° and argon flow rates between 1.1-5.0 sccm. Observation on FESEM/EDX and field emission results revealed the optimal growth of ZnO nanowires which occurred at an angle 30° and flow rate of 5 sccm. Parameters such as atom% of Zn and O and aspect ratio were measured and analysed.