A bottom-up strategy to surface assembly: Second growth from metal-rich embryos

Surface assembly is one important strategy to realize nanodevice functionalization. In this work, adopting chemical vapour deposition method, a feasible bottom-up growth approach was developed to synthesize a series of assembly oxide (ZnO, In2O3) nanostructures through rational regulation on the reagent partial vapour pressure and growing temperatures. A two-step growth mode including formation of metal-rich oxide embryos and second growth induced by excess metal species was proposed to rationalize the growth mechanism. Further, the reagent supersaturation, heating and depositing temperatures, and their temperature difference were found to be powerful factors to fine tail the morphology. More importantly, based on this growth strategy, one surface pattern protocol was developed to prepare some intriguing structure. This study offers a feasible approach to prepare self-assembly structure, and the growth strategy could be generalized in synthesis of other nanostructures. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.