MORPHOLOGY TUNING OF ZNO NANOSTRUCTURES GROWN ON ZINC FOIL USING FACILE AND LOW TEMPERATURE HYDROTHERMAL METHOD

Daud SNH, Chiu WS* , Aspanut Z and Khiew PS

Abstract

MORPHOLOGY TUNING OF ZNO NANOSTRUCTURES GROWN ON ZINC FOIL USING FACILE AND LOW TEMPERATURE HYDROTHERMAL METHOD

 Daud SNH, Chiu WS[1], Aspanut Z and Khiew PS

Low Dimensional Materials Resarch Centre, Physics Department, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603 Lembah Klang, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Current study report the growth of Zinc Oxide (ZnO) nanorods (NRs) by a facile and low temperature method on Zinc (Zn) foil in deionized (DI) water. These ZnO NRs have a typical length of 500-700 nm and average diameter of 50-70 nm. By using different volume of DI water, the morphology of ZnO nanostructures are tunable from rod-like to flower-like structures. Under the presence of Zn nitrate precursor, mixture of rod/wall-like structures are formed. Both of ZnO NRs and combined nanorods/nanowalls render higher diffraction for the (002) peak reveals, which implies preferred orientation growth along c-axis take place. However, photoluminescence (PL) study indicates that ZnO NRs have strong emission located at ~380 nm if compared to that of combined ZnO nanorods/nanowalls. This shows that ZnO NRs have higher-densities of defects.

Keywords: hydrothermal crystal growth, low temperature, ZnO nanostructures

[1] Corresponding author: Tel: +60193292772

E-mail: w.s.chiu@um.edu.my