Cryst. Res. Technol. 49, No. 5, 303–308 (2014) / DOI 10.1002/crat.201300424 Original Paper Indium phosphide nanofbers prepared by electrospinning method: Synthesis and characterization Atilla Evcin 1 , Nalan C ¸ic ¸ek Bezir 2 , Refk Kayalı 3,∗ , Mehmet Arı 4 , and Deniz Belkıs Kepekc ¸i 1 Received 18 December 2013, revised 5 March 2014, accepted 12 March 2014 Published online 1 April 2014 Nine sets of (3 × 3) InP nanofber samples have been suc- cessfully prepared at three diferent voltages (20, 25, 30 kV) and at three separate heights (5, 7, 10 cm) by electrospinning with a constant precursor fow rate of 0.3 mLh −1 . The crys- talline structure, thermal, morphologies and nanostructure, electrical, and optical properties of the samples are charac- terized by X-ray powder difractometer (XRD) and thermal gravity-diferential scanning calorimeter (TG-DSC), scan- ning electron microscopy (SEM), by Four-Point Probe Tech- nique (FPPT,) and ultraviolet/visible spectrometry (UV/VIS), respectively. From these measurements, we have found the formation of stoichiometric nanostructured InP with zinc-blende structure and having lattice parameter of a = 5.874 ˚ A, weight loss of 64.59% and crystallization tempera- ture of 500°C, average fber diameter of 65.82 nm, the acti- vation energies, E a , of the samples, and band gap energy, E g , of the nanofbers developed at constant applied voltage 30 kV. The band gap energies determined at diferent distances 5, 7, and 10 cm are found to be as 1.29, 1.37, and 1.30 eV, re- spectively. 1 Introduction Recently, many types of nanofibers and nanowires have attracted great attention due to their potential appli- cations in many areas, such as photovoltaic devices, integrated electronic circuits, solar cells, lithography and health [1–5]. Many researchers have used differ- ent methods for the fabrication of different nanofibers and nanowires such as molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) [6], vapor-liquid-solid mechanism (VLS) [7], solution- phase, shadow sputtering, and sol-gel methods [8]. Com- pared to these methods, electrospinning which is a very simple and cost-effective method for fabrication uni- form ultra-fine fibers with long lengths has many ad- vantages, such as controlling the porosity, morphology, and the diameter of the fibers [9–11]. However, there have been considerable efforts to explore the synthetic routes for III-V semiconductor InP nanocrystals, with the goal of lowering processing temperature, avoiding complex reactions and toxic precursors and searching for milder preparation conditions. Among them, elec- trospinning emerges as a very attractive method for de- veloping nanometer (nm) -and submicron-sized fibers [6–16]. Many researchers used this method for the fab- rication of nanofibers for different purposes [17–21]. Homayoni et al. have shown that the diameter of the chitosan nanofibers is strongly affected by the electro- spinning conditions as well as the concentration of the solvent [22]. Some of the researchers studied on de- veloping InP nanomaterials for various purposes, such as light emitters or absorbers in optoelectronic devices, light emitting diodes and solar cells, developing quan- tum dots for the use in optoelectronics using solution route and the other methods [1, 2, 5, 23–28]. In this work, we, firstly, developed InP nanofibers on fluorine doped tin oxide, SnO 2 :F (FTO) glass substrates that will be used as an electrode in the construction of a solar cell associated with InP nanofibers using electro- spinning method. Crystal structure, surface morphology, composition, electrical properties, and optical proper- ties of InP nanofibers produced on FTOs were character- ized by means of XRD, SEM, TG-DSC, FPPT, and UV/VIS spectrometer. ∗ Corresponding author: e-mail: refkkayali@nigde.edu.tr; Tel: +90 388 2254069; Fax: +90 388 2250180 1 Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Afyon Kocatepe University, Afyon, Turkey 2 Department of Physics, Faculty of Art and Science, S¨ uleyman Demirel University, Isparta, Turkey 3 Department of Physics, Faculty of Art and Science, Ni˘ gde University, Ni˘ gde, Turkey 4 Department of Physics, Faculty of Art and Science, Erciyes University, Kayseri, Turkey 303 C  2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim