Effect of surface roughness on nucleation and growth of vanadium pentoxide nanowires

The effect of surface roughness on subsequent growth of vanadium pentoxide (V₂O₅) nanowires is examined. With increasing surface roughness, both the number density and aspect ratio of V₂O₅ nanowires increase. Structures and morphology of obtained nanowires were characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The nanowires are approximately 40-90 nm in diameter and 2 μm in length. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis indicates that the obtained nanowires are orthorhombic structure with (0 0 1) out-of-plane orientation. The luminescence property of V₂O₅ nanowires has been investigated by photoluminescence (PL) at 150 K and 300 K. PL results show intense visible emission, which is attributed to different inter-band transitions between the V 3d and O 2p band. This simple fabrication approach might be useful for fabrication of large area V₂O₅ nanowires arrays with high density.