Mismatch Strain Induced Formation of ZnO-ZnS Heterostructured.pdfVIP

DOI: 10.1002/adma.200602698 Mismatch Strain Induced Formation of ZnO/ZnS Heterostructured Rings** By Xiang Wu, Peng Jiang,* Yong Ding, Wei Cai, Si-Shen Xie, and Zhong Lin Wang* Wurtzite-structured materials, such as ZnO, ZnS, GaN, etc., possess a common characteristic that is the existence of polar surfaces originated from cation- or anion-terminated surfaces. The polar surfaces have two unique features: the polar-charge induced formation of novel nanostructures as driven by mini- mizing energy; and the self-catalysis of cation terminated sur- face during growth.[1–3] The first characteristic leads to the for- mation of nanorings,[4] nanosprings,[5] nanohelices[6] and nanobows.[7] The second characteristic results in the formation of one-side toothed growth of nanocombs.[8,9] To date, these nanostructures have been mainly observed for a mono-com- position object such as ZnO.[10] The structure of ZnO can be described as a number of alter- nating planes composed of tetrahedrally coordinated O2– and Zn2+ ions, stacked alternatively along the c-axis. The oppo- sitely charged ions produce positively charged (0001)-Zn and negatively charged (0001?)-O polar surfaces, resulting in a nor- mal dipole moment and spontaneous polarization along the c-axis. If the thickness of the nanobelt defined mainly by the large {0001} surfaces is below ～ 20 nm, the electrostatic inter- action energy arising from the polar charges can be strong enough to overcome the increase of elastic bending energy, resulting in the curly shape of the nanobelts, which is the ori- gin for the formation of the nanosprings, nanorings, nanohe- lices and nanobows. Take the formation of nanospring as an example, our previous study shows that the inner surface of the nanospring can be either Zn2+ or O2– and the dominant driving force for forming the curly shape is the electrostatic interaction; the difference in surface stress for the Zn-termi- nated and O-terminated surfaces, if any, is so small that plays litt