Semiconducting Oxide Nanowires: Growth, Doping and Device applications

During the past decade, semiconducting oxide nanowires have been extensively investigated due to their unique features, such as the ultrahigh surface-to-volume ratios, quantum confinement effect, less scattering of the carrier, and higher mobilities compared to their bulk counterparts. These extraordinary properties of semiconducting oxide nanowires have led many researchers to pursue synthesis, doping, and novel device applications, due to their potential applications in nanoscale electronic and optoelectronic devices [1-23]. Such applications include high-performance nanowire-based field-effect transistors (FETs) [1-11], sensors [12-21] and vacuum electron field emitters [22-29], etc. This chapter provides a comprehensive perspective on research efforts made on synthesis, doping, and device applications of semiconducting oxide nanowires. The contents have been divided into three sections. The first part briefly introduces the synthesis of semiconducting oxide nanowires. The second part introduces the doping schemes of semiconducting oxide nanowires, and then studied the electrical and optical properties of the doped nanowires. The last part mainly describes the applications of semiconducting oxide nanowires, such as FETs, sensors and field emission.