Raman scattering and efficient UV photoluminescence from well-aligned ZnO nanowires epitaxially grown on GaN buffer layer

Optical phonon confinement and efficient UV emission of ZnO nanowires were investigated in use of resonant Raman scattering (RRS) and photoluminescence (PL). The high-quality ZnO nanowires with diameters of 80-100 nm and lengths of several micrometers were epitaxially grown through a simple low-pressure vapor-phase deposition method at temperature 550 degrees C on the precoated GaN(0001) buffer layer. The increasing intensity ratio of n-order longitudinal optical (LO) phonon (A(1) (nLO)/E-1 (nLO)) with increasing scattering order in RRS reveals the phonon quantum confinement as shrinking the diameter of ZnO nanowires. The exciton-related recombination near the band-edge transition dominate the UV emissions at room temperature as well as at low temperature that exhibits almost no other nonstoichiometric defects in the ZnO nanowires.