Ultraviolet emission from high-quality crystalline ultra-long AlN whiskers

Abstract

We report here the fabrication and characterization of ultra-long AlN whiskers by physical vapor transport method. The obtained whiskers are 1–3 µm in diameter and up to millimeters in length. The whiskers grow along the [0001] crystallographic direction and are well crystallized. They exhibit a strong ultraviolet emission at 345 nm, the shortest wavelength reported in AlN whiskers or nanowires. Our results indicate that these large scales of AlN whiskers are less contaminated by oxygen and other impurities compared with the previously reported ones, which may find wide applications in fabricating ultraviolet optoelectronic devices.