Nanowires of various inorganic materials have been fabricated due to the realization of their applications
in different fields.
Large-area and uniform cupric oxide (CuO) nanowires were
successfully synthesized
by a very simple thermal oxidation of copper thin films. The copper films were deposited by electron
beam evaporation onto Ti/Si substrates, in which Ti film was first deposited on silicon substrate to serve
as adhesion layer. The structure characterization revealed that these nanowires are monoclinic structured
single crystallites. The effects of different growth parameters, namely, annealing time, annealing
temperature, and film thickness on the fabrication of the CuO nanowires were investigated by scanning
electron microscopy. A typical procedure simply involved the thermal oxidation of these substrates in air
and within the temperature range from 300 to 700 ◦C. It is found that nanowires can only be formed at
thermal temperature of 400 ◦C. It is observed that the growth time has an important effect on the length
and density of the CuO nanowires, whereas the average diameter is almost the same, i.e.50 nm. Different
from the vapor–liquid–solid (VLS) and vapor–solid (VS) mechanism, the growth of nanowires is found to
be based on the accumulation and relaxation of the stress.
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