Surface Energies Control the Self-Organization of Oriented In₂O₃ Nanostructures on Cubic Zirconia

Highly aligned one-dimensional (1D) nanorods of the transparent conducting oxide In(2)O(3) have been grown on (110)-oriented Y-stabilized ZrO(2) substrates, whereas growth on (100) and (111) substrates leads respectively to blocklike 3D islands and continuous films. It is shown that the striking influence of substrate orientation on the growth morphology is controlled by differences in energies between the low index surfaces of In(2)O(3) and that spontaneous self-organization is driven by minimization of surface energies.