Synthesis and characterization of twin crystal CdTe nanowires

•One-step synthesized longitudinal twinning CdTe nanowires.•The longitudinal twinning nanowire has more obvious quantum confinement effect than single crystal nanowire.•Lower combination capacity to oxygen. Due to different structures have a great influence on the performance of electronic devices, we designed the CdTe nanowires with twinning structure. The introduction of longitudinal twinning into nanowires through rational design is an ideal method to promote the quantum confinement effect of nanowire. In our work, a great number of longitudinal twinning nanowires and a few transverse twinning nanowires have been synthesized by one-step chemical vapor deposition (CVD) via vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) growth mechanism. Different ratios of cadmium and tellurium in CdTe nanowires lead to different phases. When the content of cadmium was higher, the crystal-phase structure was zinc blend. When the content of tellurium was higher, the crystal-phase structure was wurtzite. We believe this work provides one versatile synthesis route that could be extended for the synthesis of other tellurium metal composites with the advantageous structure for various optoelectronic applications and beyond.