Properties of SnO2 and SnO2-xNx grown on the boat walls using vapor transport method

The aim of the study was to examine the properties of SnO2 and SnO2-xNx nanowires (NWs) grown on the walls of the boat of the vapor transport system. Nanowires of SnO2 and SnO2-xNx were synthesized using Ar plus O-2 and N-2 plus O-2 gas mixtures, respectively. The obtained chemical compositions were SnO2 and SnO1.71N0.18. In both cases, tetragonal single-phase SnO2 with nanowires morphologies were obtained by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy examinations, respectively. The NWs diameters were ranged from 150 nm to 1.6 mu m, and the lengths extended to more than 400 mu m for the sample grown with Ar plus O-2, whereas the diameters of the NWs ranged from 30 nm to 2.1 mu m and the lengths exceeded to 1 mm for the sample grown with N-2 plus O-2. The calculated optical band gap values were 3.54 and 3.27 eV for samples grown with Ar plus O-2 and N-2 plus O-2, respectively. Higher photoluminescence spectrum intensity was observed for SnO2-xNx NWs. The room-temperature resistivity of SnO2-xNx was one order lower than that for SnO2 NWs and decreased upon increasing temperature, indicating a semiconducting behavior. Two activation energies were recorded for each sample.