Catalyst-free synthesis of ZnO nanorod arrays on InP (001) substrate by pulsed laser deposition

Abstract High-density well-aligned ZnO nanorod arrays were successfully fabricated on ZnO a seed-layer coated InP (001) substrate by using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique without metal catalyst. SEM image showed that uniformly distributed droplet-like ZnO seed-layer was formed on the InP wafer. Well-oriented ZnO nanorods were formed perpendicular to the seed-layer coated substrate and well-separated from each other. X-ray diffraction θ –2 θ scanning measurements demonstrated that the ZnO nanorods exhibited a strong c -axis orientation with high crystalline quality. The photoluminescence (PL) spectrum measurement illuminated that the ZnO nanorods produced in this work had well optical quality. The well-aligned and separated ZnO nanorods fabricated by this comparatively simple technique shed light on further applications for nanodevices.