ABSTRACT
Fabrication of 1-D metal oxide by thermal oxidation process is investigated and presented because it is an essential building block for nanoengineering and design. The thermal oxidation technique is a simple and powerful technique and can be roughly classified by the external driving heating energy into three main approaches, including (i) thermal heating oxidation technique in the furnace (ii) current heating oxidation technique and (iii) microwave-assisted thermal oxidation technique. These techniques can be effectively used to prepare 1-D nanostructures of metal oxides or compounds of metal oxide, in which ZnO is given as an example for the fabrication. In addition, the fabrication of the 1-D metal oxide nanostructures by thermal oxidation process can be simply and completely explained via growth kinetics in term of thermodynamic parameters in order to understand the growth mechanism of 1-D metal oxide nanostructure formation. The growth kinetics of ZnO nanostructures are discussed and based on both 2-D and 3-D growth kinetics to explain nanowires and tetrapods/interlinked-tetrapod networks, respectively. The understanding of the growth mechanism not only can apply to ZnO but also can apply to all metal oxide materials. This understanding could be useful for nanofabrication and nanoengineering of novel nanodevices.
