Growth of ZnO nanowires on SiO2 thin films containing Au nanoparicles

One-dimensional (1D) nanostructures including nanowires, nanorods, nanobelts and nanotubes have attracted rapidly growing interest due to their fascinating properties and unique applications in nanoscale electronic, magnetic and photonic devices. It is expected that the nanowire based quasi 1D materials will be the focus of the next decade of nanomaterials research [1]. Quantum wires have demonstrated interesting electrical transport properties thatare not seen in bulk materials. Zinc oxide (ZnO) is a direct band-gap (Eg = 3.37 eV) semiconductor with a large exciton binding energy (60 meV), exhibiting near UV emission,transparent conductivity and piezoelectricity. Furthermore, ZnO is bio-safe and biocompatible,and may be used for biomedical applications without coating. Intensive research has been focused on fabricating 1D ZnO nanostructures and in correlating their morphologies with theirsize-related optical and electrical properties [2-4]. In this paper, we have investigated the growth of ZnO nanowires on nanocomposite Au:SiO2 system. The synthesized ZnO nanowires have been examined from structureal and crystal orientational view point