Growth methodology for nanowires

Abstract

ZnO, as an important semiconducting material, has a wide range of applications in optics, optoelectronics, sensors, actuators, energy, biomedical sciences and spintronics [1]. ZnO exhibit the most splendid and abundant configurations of nanostructures that one material can form. ZnO is one of the few dominant nanomaterials for nanotechnology. There are a few existing excellent reviews related to nanowire growth and characterization especially about ZnO [3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. As for the purpose of this paper, we will mainly focus on the synthesis of nanowires especially aligned arrays via a vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) or vapor-solid-solid growth process.