Abstract
ZnO is of great interest for various technological applications ranging from optoelectronics to chemical sensors because of its superior emission, electronic, and chemical properties. In addition, vertically well-aligned ZnO nanorods on large areas with good optical and structural properties are of special interest for the fabrication of electronic and optical nanodevices. To date, several approaches have been proposed for the growth of one-dimensional (1D) ZnO nanostructunres. Several groups have been reported the MOCVD growth of ZnO nanorods with no metal catalysts at $400^{\circ}C$, and fabricated a well-aligned ZnO nanorod array on a PLD prepared ZnO film by using a catalyst-free method. It has been suggested that the synthesis of ZnO nanowires using a template-less/surfactant-free aqueous method. However, despite being a well-established and cost-effective method of thin film deposition, the use of magnetrons puttering to grow ZnO nanorods has not been reported yet. Additionally,magnetron sputtering has the dvantage of producing highly oriented ZnO film sat a relatively low process temperature. Currently, more effort has been concentrated on the synthesis of 1D ZnO nanostructures doped with various metal elements (Al, In, Ga, etc.) to obtain nanostructures with high quality,improved emission properties, and high conductance in functional oxide semiconductors. Among these dopants, Ga-doped ZnO has demonstrated substantial advantages over Al-doped ZnO, including greater resistant to oxidation. Since the covalent bond length of Ga-O ($1.92\;{\AA}$) is nearly equal to that of Zn-O ($1.97\;{\AA}$), high electron mobility and low electrical resistivity are also expected in the Ga-doped ZnO. In this article, we report the successful growth of Ga-doped ZnO nanorods on c-Sapphire substrate without metal catalysts by magnetrons puttering and our investigations of their structural, optical, and field emission properties.
