The appearance of ZnO nanowires or nanorods in the solution after the hydrothermal growth may stem from the impurities acting as nucleation sites since the reagents in the experiment are not of ultra-purity. In this regard, the seed layer on the Si nanowire surface plays an important role in the growth of branched ZnO/Si nanowire arrays as it provides nucleation sites and determines the growing direction and density of the ZnO nanowire arrays for reducing the thermodynamic barrier. Figure 6 SEM images of products prepared in different substrate directions in solution on the Si nanowire arrays: (a) vertical, (b) facedown, and (c) faceup.

The Si nanowire arrays were not capped with ZnO seed layer MDV3100 before hydrothermal growth. Conclusions Branched ZnO/Si nanowire arrays with hierarchical structure were synthesized by a three-step process, including the growth of crystalline Si nanowire arrays as backbones by chemical etching of Si substrates, selleck chemical the deposition of

ZnO thin film as a seed layer by magnetron sputtering, and the fabrication of ZnO nanowires arrays as branches by hydrothermal growth. During the synthesis CHIR98014 purchase procedure, an etchant solution with an appropriate redox potential of the oxidant was vital for a moderate etching speed to achieve a well-aligned Si nanowire array with solid and round surface. Meanwhile, the presence of gravity gradient was a key issue for the growth of branched ZnO nanowire arrays. The substrate should be placed vertically or facedown in contrast to the solution surface during the hydrothermal grown. Otherwise, only the condensation of the ZnO nanoparticles took place in a form of film on the substrate surface.

The seed layer played another important role in the growth of ZnO nanowire arrays, as it provided selleck nucleation sites and determined the growing direction and density of the nanowire arrays for reducing the thermodynamic barrier. Acknowledgements This work was supported by 973 Program (2012CB619301, 2011CB925600), National Natural Science Foundation of China (61227009, 90921002), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2012121014, 2013121009), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Xiamen Universities (DC2013081). References 1. Law M, Greene LE, Johnson JC, Richard Saykally R, Yang P: Nanowire dye-sensitized solar cells. Nat Mater 2005, 4:455–459.CrossRef 2. Hu JT, Odom TW, Lieber CM: Chemistry and physics in one dimension: synthesis and properties of nanowires and nanotubes. Acc Chem Res 1999, 32:435–445.CrossRef 3. Akhavan O: Graphene nanomesh by ZnO nanorod photocatalysts. ACS Nano 2010, 4:4774–4780. 4. Pan XW, Shi MM, Zheng DX, Liu N, Chen HZ, Wang M: Room-temperature solution route to free-standing SiO 2 -capped Si nanocrystals with green luminescence. Mater Chem Phys 2009, 117:517–521.CrossRef 5. Shi M, Pan X, Qiu W, Zheng D, Xu M, Chen H: Si/ZnO core–shell nanowire arrays for photoelectrochemical water splitting. Int J Hydrogen Energ 2011, 36:15153–15159.CrossRef 6.