Effect of zinc acetate dihydrate concentration on morphology of ZnO seed layer and ZnO nanorods grown by hydrothermal method

Abstract

Fine-tuning zinc oxide (ZnO) nanostructures using a simple methodology will give benefits in designing efficient optoelectronic devices. In this paper, the effect of zinc acetate dihydrate (ZAD) concentration on the deposition of the ZnO seed layer by drop-casting and the growth of ZnO nanorods (ZnO NRs) was studied. As the concentration of ZAD increases, the more aggregation of ZnO nucleation centers in the seed layer. Growth of ZnO NRs using concentration 0.01 M results in the highest aspect ratio and nanorod density due to the aggregation process resulting in more nucleation sites with smaller grain sizes. X-ray diffraction (XRD) done on the four samples show that 0.001 M concentration demonstrates the highest intensity of vertically aligned (002) ZnO NRs. Photoluminescence (PL) spectra show ZnO NRs grown using 0.01 M ZAD solution exhibits the highest intensity in near band edge (NBE) emission compared to other samples.