Abstract
Well-crystallized Al-doped ZnO nanowires were synthesized by means of thermal evaporation technique in large quantity on silicon substrate using high purity metallic zinc and aluminum powders in the presence of oxygen. The synthesized nanowires were examined in terms of their morphological, structural and optical properties. The detailed morphological and structural properties reveal that the synthesized products are nanowires, grown in high density and possessing well crystalline structures. The optical property of as-synthesized Al-doped ZnO nanowires was examined by room-temperature photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy which shows a broad band in the visible region with a suppressed UV emission. The origination of broad visible emission could be correlated with the presence of structural defects due to insertion of Al-atoms in the lattices of as-grown nanowires. The electrical properties of as-synthesized Al-doped ZnO nanowires were explored by fabricating single nanowire based field effect transistors (FETs). The fabricated single Al-doped ZnO nanowire based FET exhibits carrier concentration and electron mobility of similar to 4.80 x 10(17) cm(-3) and similar to 25.02 cm(2)V(-1)s(-1), respectively.