Synthesis of tin-doped indium oxide nanowires by self-catalytic VLS growth

In this paper, bulk-quantity tin-doped indium oxide nanowires were successfully synthesized by direct thermal evaporation of a mixture of In and SnO powders in air at 920degreesC. Such nanowires have a uniform shape and single crystalline cubic bixbite structure, with the diameters varying from 100 to 200 nm and lengths in the range of tens to hundreds of micrometres. The growth process of these ternary oxide nanowires can be interpreted by a self-catalytic vapour-liquid-solid growth mechanism. This approach to synthesizing ternary oxides should be readily extensible to preparing other multinary oxide nanowires, such as Cd2SnO4, Zn-Sn-In-O, Ga-In-Sn-O, Cd-In-Sn-O and Zn-Sn-Cd-O nanowires or nanobelts.