Rapid, low-temperature synthesis of single-crystallineCo3O4 nanorods on silicon substrates on a large scale

Abstract

When heated in a rapid thermal processor at350 °C in air, cobalt thin (50 nm thick) films were transformed intoCo3O4 nanorods in minutes. The nanorods are single-crystalline and are typically several hundrednanometers long and several tens of nanometers in diameter. They exhibited room-temperaturephotoluminescence in the visible range and good field emission properties, i.e. a low turn-on field of∼2.8 V µm−1 and good stability at high emission currents. This study provides a simple but rapidapproach that is compatible with microtechnology and is capable of fabricating metal oxidenanorods at low substrate temperatures, on a large scale.