Rapid thermal annealing effects on tin oxide nanowires prepared by vapor-liquid-solid technique

Tin oxide nanowires have been grown on p-type silicon substrates using a gold-catalyst-assisted vapor-liquid-solid growth process. The nanowires were annealed in the presence of oxygen at 700 degrees C for different time intervals. The changes in material properties of the nanowires after annealing were investigated using various characterization techniques. Annealing improves the crystal quality of the nanowires as seen from Raman spectroscopy analysis. Photoluminescence (PL) data indicates a decrease in the oxygen vacancies and defects after annealing, affecting the luminescence from the nanowires. In addition, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was used to obtain the changes in the tin and oxygen atomic concentrations before and after annealing, from which the stoichiometry was calculated.