Structural and optical properties of Al-doped SnO2 nanowires

We report a facile thermal evaporation method for the syntheses of Al-doped SnO₂ nanowires using Al-doped SnO₂ nanoparticles as precursors. High-density, single-crystalline Al-doped SnO₂ nanowires were directly grown on the 6H-SiC substrates without any catalyst. X-ray diffraction patterns show that the Al dopants are incorporated into the rutile SnO₂ nanowires. The X-ray photoelectron spectra confirm the SnO₂ nanowires doped with 5 at.% Al. The photoluminescence spectra of the Al-doped SnO₂ nanowires exhibit that the large blue shift of the emission band can be observed in the Al-doped SnO₂ nanowires compared with undoped nanowires. The distortion of the crystal lattices caused by incorporation of Al atoms at the interstitials should be responsible for the large blue shift of the emission band.