Surface energies control the self-organization of oriented In2O3 nanostructures on cubic zirconia

Kelvin H L Zhang; Aron Walsh; C Richard A Catlow; Vlado K Lazarov; Russell G Egdell

doi:10.1021/nl102403t

Surface energies control the self-organization of oriented In2O3 nanostructures on cubic zirconia

Nano Lett. 2010 Sep 8;10(9):3740-6. doi: 10.1021/nl102403t.

Authors

Kelvin H L Zhang¹, Aron Walsh, C Richard A Catlow, Vlado K Lazarov, Russell G Egdell

Affiliation

¹ Department of Chemistry, Chemistry Research Laboratory, University of Oxford, 12 Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3TA, United Kingdom.

PMID: 20718401
DOI: 10.1021/nl102403t

Abstract

Highly aligned one-dimensional (1D) nanorods of the transparent conducting oxide In(2)O(3) have been grown on (110)-oriented Y-stabilized ZrO(2) substrates, whereas growth on (100) and (111) substrates leads respectively to blocklike 3D islands and continuous films. It is shown that the striking influence of substrate orientation on the growth morphology is controlled by differences in energies between the low index surfaces of In(2)O(3) and that spontaneous self-organization is driven by minimization of surface energies.