Influence of Solution Temperature for Hydrothermally Grown Zinc Oxide Nanorods

Abstract

Well-aligned arrays of vertically oriented ZnO nanorods were synthesized using hydrothermal method using equal molar concentration of zinc acetate hexahydrate (Zn (CH3COO)2.6H2O) and hexamethylenetetramine (C6H12N4) at various deposition temperatures. The resulting nanorods were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), photoluminescence (PL), and UV-vis spectrophotometer. XRD and FESEM results indicate that the crystallinity improved for nanorods grown at 85 °C. The preferred growth direction of these nanorods is in (002) direction. However, the nanorods were grown at 55 °C shows poor crystalline characteristics. Typically, these nanorods have grown up to 1000 nm with the diameter range of 25-50 nm. The obtained ZnO nanorods exhibit a weaker UV emission peak located around ~380-390 nm and a relatively stronger yellow-red emission band located at 625 nm to 675 nm.