Heteroepitaxial Growth of Orientation-Ordered ZnS Nanowire Arrays

Zinc sulfide (ZnS) is an important functional material for electronics and optoelectronics. In this paper, heteroepitaxial growth of ZnS nanowire arrays on Zn 3 P 2 crystals, which are structural uniform with preferred (0001) growth directions, was fulfilled by using a simple thermal evaporation method. Studies found that hexagonal ZnS and tetragonal Zn 3 P 2 showed a good orientation relationship of [010] Zn 3 P 2 //[12̅10] ZnS and (101)Zn 3 P 2 //(0002) ZnS, which makes it possible to obtain well-aligned ZnS nanowire arrays epitaxially grown on Zn 3 P 2 crystals. As-grown ZnS nanowire arrays show a strong broad green emission band centered at 554 nm and a weak emission band at about 802 nm. Field-emission studies found that they show good field emissions with a turn-on field of about 3.72 V/μm.