SYNTHESIS AND STUDY OF OPTICAL, ELECTRICAL PROPERTIES OF TIN DIOXIDE NANOWIRES IN A SiO<sub>2</sub>/Si TRACK TEMPLATE

Abstract

This work presents a study of the structural, optical and electrical characteristics of tin dioxide (SnO2) nanowires obtained by chemical deposition (CD) into a SiO2/Si track template (template synthesis). Latent tracks in the SiO2 layer were created by irradiation with swift heavy ions (SHI) of Xe at an energy of 200 MeV with a fluence of Ф = 108 cm−2 and subsequent etching in a 4% aqueous solution of hydrofluoric acid (HF). The chosen CD method is widely used for the deposition of semiconductor oxide nanowires in SiO2 nanopores. The CD method is cost-effective because it does not require special equipment for deposition of nanowires. To carry out deposition, a solution of a coordination compound of a metal and a reducing agent is used. To analyze the filling of pores after the CD process, the surface morphology of the samples was studied using a Zeiss Crossbeam 540 scanning microscope. The crystallographic structure of SnO2/SiO2/Si nanostructures with SnO2 nanopore filling was studied by X-ray diffraction. X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) is carried out on a Rigaku SmartLab X-ray diffractometer. As a result, a SnO2-NW/SiO2/Si nanoheterostructure with an orthorhombic crystal structure of SnO2 nanowires was obtained. Photoluminescence (PL) spectra were measured upon excitation with light at a wavelength of 240 nm using a CM2203 spectrofluorimeter (Solar). Gaussian decomposition of the photoluminescence spectrum of SnO2-NW/SiO2/Si structures showed that they have low intensity, which is mainly due to the presence of defects such as oxygen vacancies, interstitial tin or tin with damaged bonds. Electrical characterization studies were performed using a VersaStat 3 potentiostat (Ametek). Measurement of the current-voltage characteristic showed that the resulting SnO2-NW/SiO2/Si nanoheterostructure contains arrays of p-n junctions.