The annealing investigation on morphology and photoluminescence properties of In₂O₃ 1-D nanostructures in resistive evaporation mechanism

Department of Physics, Research Institute of Applied Sciences, Academic Centre of Education, Culture and Research (ACECR), Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, P.O. Box 19835-169, Iran

^a e-mail: shariat@rias.ac.ir

Received: 15 August 2013
Revised: 30 November 2013
Accepted: 13 January 2014
Published online: 14 February 2014

Abstract

Synthesis of In₂O₃ nanostructures grown on Si substrate by the resistive evaporation of metallic indium granules followed by dry oxidation process has been articulated. To prepare nucleation growth sites, selected samples pre-annealed around indium melting point in free-oxygen atmosphere and then to fabricate 1-D nanostructures, they annealed in a horizontal thermal furnace in presence of argon and oxygen. For comparison, one sample, the same origin as initially pre-annealed samples, was excluded in pre-annealing process but presented in annealing step. Characterization of the products with FESEM revealed that the pre-annealed obtained nanostructures are mostly nanorod and nanowire with different morphologies. For the comparative sample, no 1-D structures achieved. X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns for pre-annealed samples indicated that they are crystalline and the comparative one is polycrystalline. Photoluminescence (PL) measurements carried out at room temperature revealed that emission band shifted to shorter wavelength from pre-annealed samples to comparative one.