This means that when being deposited at RT, ZnSe was more likely to gather on the top surfaces or stack in the upper parts of the gaps between the rods, rather than diffusing smoothly to the bottom. At 500°C, in contrast, ZnSe

was uniformly deposited on the whole surface of the ZnO NRs. The deposited ZnSe can diffuse on the side surfaces of ZnO NRs at elevated temperatures to form ZnSe shells outside the ZnO cores. It seems therefore that high-temperature deposition of ZnSe is more selleck inhibitor suitable for the fabrication of ZnO/ZnSe core/shell NRs than RT deposition. The images of Figure 1d show that sample D has a better morphology than sample B; however, the deposited ZnSe still remains mainly in the upper parts of the gaps. Although the morphology can be improved to a certain extent by high-temperature annealing, the samples prepared by RT deposition of ZnSe followed by annealing JIB04 datasheet are not as good EPZ-6438 ic50 in morphology as those prepared by depositing ZnSe at 500°C. Figure 1 FESEM images showing the top view and cross-sectional view of samples A (a), B (b), C (c), and D (d), respectively. Structure Figure 2 illustrates the XRD patterns of the obtained samples. The typical XRD pattern of sample A (curve a) is dominated by a narrow peak at 2θ = 34.38° with a full width at half-maximum (FWHM) of 0.15°.

This peak is indexed to the (002) diffraction of hexagonal wurtzite ZnO (JCPDS: 36–1451). Another distinct peak at 2θ = 62.83° and two other weak ones are identified to be diffracted by the (103), (101), and (102) planes, respectively, also indexed to wurtzite ZnO. The bare ZnO NRs are therefore wurtzite with a preferred c-axis orientation in crystal structure and present nanocrystalline nature composed of many nano-sized crystallites. The lattice constants are calculated to be a = 0.321 nm and c = 0.522 nm from the XRD data, close to the constants of bulk wurtzite ZnO (JCPDS: 36–1451). And the mean size

of the crystallites is estimated to be about 48 nm according to Scherrer’s formula [14]. Figure 2 XRD patterns of samples A (a), B (b), C (c), and D (d), respectively. Besides the ZnO (002) peak, the XRD pattern of sample B shows one broad peak located at 2θ = 26.86°. This peak is attributed to the (111) diffraction of face-centered cubic (FCC) zinc blende ZnSe (JCPDS: 37–1463). The broadening of the diffraction peak indicates the small crystallite size of the deposited ZnSe. Moreover, the ZnO (002) peak exhibits a small shift (approximately 0.2°) toward the smaller angle side, suggesting that the lattice of the ZnO cores suffers a tensile strain. This can be attributed to the growth of the ZnSe shells outside the ZnO cores since ZnSe has a much larger lattice constant than ZnO [9]. For sample D obtained by annealing sample B at 500°C in N2, both the ZnSe (111) and the ZnO (002) peaks show an increased intensity and a narrowed FWHM compared with sample B, indicating an improvement in crystal quality of ZnSe and ZnO due to annealing.