Fabrication and characterization of wire-like SnO2

Wire-like SnO2 is fabricated by the wet chemical method. X-ray diffraction measurements show that the obtained samples have rutile-type structure. Electron transmission microscopy experiments illustrate that the wire-like SnO2 ranged from 10 to 50 nm in width and several microns (μm) in length. The high-resolution TEM indicates that SnO2 wires are single crystals. The possible growth mechanism is proposed, and it is found that polyethylene glycol plays an important role in obtaining the wire-like and nano-rods morphology of SnO2. The band gap is determined to be 3.56 eV. Two photoluminescence peaks located at 389 and 470 nm are observed. Our fabrication method promises a simple way of synthesizing wire-like SnO2 at a low temperature of 350◦C.