Metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxial growth of vertically well-aligned ZnO nanorods

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Abstract
We report metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxialgrowth and structural and photoluminescent characteristics of ZnOnanorods. The nanorods were grown on Al 2 O 3 (00⋅1) substrates at 400 °C without employing any metal catalysts usually needed in other methods. Electron microscopy revealed that nanorods with uniform distributions in their diameters, lengths, and densities were grown vertically from the substrates. The mean diameter of the nanorods is as narrow as 25 nm. In addition, x-ray diffraction measurements clearly show that ZnOnanorods were grown epitaxially with homogeneous in-plane alignment as well as a c-axis orientation. More importantly, from photoluminescencespectra of the nanorods strong and narrow excitonic emission and extremely weak deep level emission were observed, indicating that the nanorods are of high optical quality.