IOP PUBLISHING NANOTECHNOLOGY Nanotechnology 18 (2007) 305705 (6pp) doi:10.1088/0957-4484/18/30/305705 Structure and stimulated emission of ZnSe nanoribbons grown by thermal evaporation Feifei Wang 1,2,3 , Zhihua Zhang 3 , Ruibin Liu 1,3 , Xiao Wang 4 , Xing Zhu 4 , Anlian Pan 1,3 and Bingsuo Zou 1,3,5 1 Micro-Nano Technologies Research Center, and State Key Lab of CBSC, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, People’s Republic of China 2 School of Physics and Electronic Engineering, Ludong University, Yantai 264025, People’s Republic of China 3 Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, People’s Republic of China 4 Department of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, People’s Republic of China E-mail: zoubs@aphy.iphy.ac.cn Received 16 January 2007, in final form 23 May 2007 Published 29 June 2007 Online at stacks.iop.org/Nano/18/305705 Abstract Zinc selenide nanoribbons were synthesized on silicon wafers by simple thermal evaporation of high purity ZnSe powder. The x-ray diffraction pattern indicates that all diffraction peaks can be attributed to the zinc-blende structured ZnSe. The selected-area electron diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy also show the typical structure of highly crystalline zinc-blende. The stimulated emission of these ZnSe nanoribbons can be observed under a nanosecond laser pulse excitation at a threshold of about 200 kW cm −2 . These ZnSe nanoribbons with more structural defects, which were made from a low purity source, only show an emission band at about 610 nm in the photoluminescence spectrum. Furthermore, experiments show that both types of ZnSe nanoribbons show good waveguide properties. (Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version) 1. Introduction Recently one-dimensional nanoscale materials have attracted a great deal of attention because they can act as fundamental building blocks in many fields [1–5]. Compared with nanowires and nanorods, nanoribbons, with unique geometry and large width-to-thickness ratio, can offer more opportunities for fundamental research and applications [5, 6]. Now all kinds of one-dimensional IV, II–VI and III–V nanomaterials have been prepared by using different methods [7]. ZnSe, as one of the important functional materials, has a direct bandgap of 2.7 eV at room temperature [8]. It is a potential material for applications in blue and short-wavelength optoelectronics devices. One-dimensional ZnSe nanomaterials have been prepared by methods of MOCVD, laser ablation, 5 Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed. electrodeposition, vapour phase deposition, etc. [9–14]. In this paper, we report a simple synthesis of ZnSe nanoribbons, the characterization of structure from different sources and the stimulated emission properties of the sample. 2. Experimental details ZnSe was synthesized in an electrical furnace with a horizontal quartz tube (35 mm diameter, 100 cm length) by physical evaporation of ZnSe powder with Au as catalyst. Silicon wafers were first ultrasonically cleaned in acetone and then sputter-coated with thin Au film (10 nm thickness). ZnSe (99.999%) powder was put into the centre of a horizontal tube furnace, and several clean silicon wafers coated with Au film were laid downstream of the gas flow. High purity He was introduced into the quartz tube to eliminate the oxygen inside it before heating. After about an hour, the temperature of 0957-4484/07/305705+06$30.00 1 © 2007 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK