Correlation between SSM substrate effect and physical properties of ZnO nanowires electrodeposited with or without seed layer for enhanced photoelectrochemical applications

Abstract

ZnO nanowires (NWs) were grown vertically by electrodeposition technique on a stainless-steel mesh (SSM) substrate in the presence and absence of seed layer. A new contribution to the knowledge of both substrate nature and seed layer dependence on structural, morphological, optical properties is reported. X-ray diffraction revealed that all the samples are mainly crystallized in the wurtzite ZnO phase. In the presence of seed layer onto the SSM substrate, the crystalline nature of ZnO NWs is improved by the enhancement of intensity in (002) peak, which indicates a preferential orientation along this peak. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images show that, in the presence of seed layer, nanowires appear uniform and stand perpendicular to the substrate with hexagonal shape, implying the occurrence of the wurtzite ZnO crystal structure. According to optical measurements, the decrease of the band-gap energy is due mainly to the seed layer effect and the SSM substrate contribution. To investigate the effect of seed layer and SSM substrate, a photoeletrochemical (PEC) analysis of ZnO NWs is performed. The photocurrent density produced by the ZnO NWs/ZnO/SSM electrode reached 0.2mA·cm^-2, about two times higher than that measured on the ZnO NWs/SSM electrode. These results indicate that both seed layer and substrate have great potential in photoelectrochemical devices.