Fabrication of well-ordered CuO nanowire arrays by direct oxidation of sputter-deposited Cu3N film

Abstract Well-ordered CuO nanowire arrays were prepared through directly annealing the sputter-deposited Cu 3 N film at 300 °C for 90 min in atmosphere. The XRD and XPS results indicate that the Cu 3 N film completely changes to CuO without any other oxides such as after annealed. XPS results also indicate that there is also residual nitrogen in the CuO nanowire arrays. The FE-SEM and TEM images show that the CuO nanowire arrays are vertical to the substrate with a diameter of about 20 nm and a length of ∼ 0.6 μm. The growth mechanism is also discussed preliminarily.