519. Nanobelts of semiconducting oxides

Fig. 1 Schematic illustration of the synthesis setting.

Fig. 2 (a) XRD pattern, (b) magnified TEM image revealing the general morphology, and (c) histogram revealing the diameter distribution of the Ga2O3 NWs.

Zheng Wei Pan, et al, Science 291, 1947 (2001)
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1058120

(1) The oxides with the nanobelt morphology cover cations with different valence states and materials with different crystallographic structures, and it seems to be a common structural characteristic for the family of semiconducting oxides.
(2) Ultralong beltlike (or ribbonlike) nanostructures (so-called nanobelts) were successfully synthesized for semiconducting oxides of zinc, tin, indium, cadmium, and gallium by simply evaporating the desired commercial metal oxide powders at high temperatures.
(3) It may be possible to cut these nanobelts with a focused electron or ion beam, so that nanobelts with specific lengths for nanodevice applications.
(4) The growth of the gallium oxide nanowires by evaporation from a bulk gallium target is not controlled by the well-known vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) mechanism, instead they are seemingly grown via a vapor-solid (VS) process, in which the structural defects play an important role both during the nucleation and the preferable axial growth of the wires.