Dendritic nanowire ultraviolet laser array

Self-organized dendritic crystal growth is explored to assemble uniform semiconductor nanowires into highly ordered one-dimensional microscale arrays that resemble comb structures. The individual ZnO nanowires have uniform diameters ranging from 10 to 300 nm. They are evenly spaced on a stem with a regular periodicity of 0.1-2 μm. Under optical excitation, each individual ZnO nanowire serves as a Fabry-Perot optical cavity, and together they form a highly ordered nanowire ultraviolet laser array. Copyright © 2003 American Chemical Society.