Chemical vapor deposition synthesis and growth mechanism of necklace-like aln nanowires

Common AlN nanowires were synthesized by catalyst-aided chemical vapor deposition method through the direct reaction of Al powders and nitrogen at high temperature. The common AlN nanowire is about several tens of micrometer in length and 10-20 nm in diameter. A kind of necklace-like AlN nanowire with length of 1-5 μm and diameter of 10-100 nm was fabricated by adjusting heating temperature and holding time. The morphology, microstructure analysis and crystal geometry computation indicate that the surface of the necklace-like AlN nanowire is assembled with {101̄1} faces of h-AlN. A cooperative growth mechanism based on the vapor-liquid-solid and vapor-solid model is proposed to explain the formation of this novel necklace-like AlN nanowire.