Abstract
Zinc sulfide (ZnS) is an important functional material for electronics and optoelectronics. In this paper, heteroepitaxial growth of ZnS nanowire arrays on Zn3P2 crystals, which are structural uniform with preferred (0001) growth directions, was fulfilled by using a simple thermal evaporation method. Studies found that hexagonal ZnS and tetragonal Zn3P2 showed a good orientation relationship of [010]Zn3P2//[12 (1) over bar0](ZnS) and (101)Zn3P2//(0002)(ZnS), which makes it possible to obtain well-aligned ZnS nanowire arrays epitaxially grown on Zn3P2 crystals. As-grown ZnS nanowire arrays show a strong broad green emission band centered at 554 nm and a weak emission band at about 802 nm. Field-emission studies found that they show good field emissions with a turn-on field of about 3.72 V/mu m.