Surface Energies Control the Self-Organization of Oriented In2O3 Nanostructures on Cubic Zirconia

Highly aligned one-dimensional (ID) nanorods of the transparent conducting oxide In2O3 have been grown on (110)oriented Y-stabilized ZrO2 substrates, whereas growth on (100) and (111) substrates leads respectively to blocklike 3D islands and continuous films. Ills shown that the striking influence of substrate orientation on the growth morphology is controlled by differences in energies between the low index surfaces of In2O3 and that spontaneous self-organization is driven by minimization of surface energies.