Germanium Catalyzed Amorphous Silicon Dioxide Nanowires Synthesized via Thermal Evaporation Method

摘要

In In this paper we report a simple thermal evaporation technique (horizontal tube furnace) to grow the bulk-quantity of the germanium (Ge)-catalyzed amorphous silicon dioxide (SiO_2) nanowires on the Si substrate by using germanium (Ge) powder as catalyst. The nanostructure and optical properties of the Ge-catalyzed amorphous SiO_2 nanowires have been investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), X-Ray diffraction (XRD) and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. The investigation of structural properties indicated that the structures consist of SiO_2 nanowire (SiO_2 NWs) with diameters around 90-700 nm and length of about several tens of micrometers. EDX reveals that the nanowires structures have Ge, Si and O compositions and XRD analysis confirmed the product is typical amorphous structure. Room temperature photoluminescence (PL) spectrum shows emission peak at UV region, opening up a route to potential applications in future optoelectronic devices.