Preparation of Indium Tin Oxide Nanowires by Using physical-vapor-transport method

Abstract

This paper presents a physical-vapor-transport method for the growth of Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) nanowires. ITO nanowires were successfully fabricated by physical vapor transport method using gold nanoparticles as catalyst prepared by two methods. The effects of holding temperature and catalyst on the growth of ITO nanowires were investigated. The experimental results show that the longer ITO nanowires can be grown by increasing the holding temperature at 850 °C, increasing the proportion of carbon powder, and using gold nanoparticles catalyst with smaller particle size. The longest ITO nanowire we fabricated is as long as 45 μm. Our experiments show that the density and diameter of ITO nanowires can be controlled by controlling the density and diameter of gold nanoparticle catalysts. The smaller the nanoparticle diameter is, the easier it is to grow long ITO nanowires.