Germanium Catalyzed Amorphous Silicon Dioxide Nanowires Synthesized via Thermal Evaporation Method

Abstract

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 (SiO2) nanowires on the Si substrate by using germanium (Ge) powder as catalyst. The nanostructure and optical properties of the Ge‐catalyzed amorphous SiO2 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 SiO2 nanowire (SiO2 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.