Tuning the morphology of the ZnO nanostructures by seeded-growth method

Abstract

Metal oxide nanostructures have been the area of interest prospective applications in multitudinous technologies that are electroluminescent devices, chemical sensors and solar cells. At room temperature, wide direct band gap of 3.37 eV, Zinc Oxide has been the supreme candidate for optoelectronic applications among variety of semiconducting metal-oxides such as TiO2, ZnO, SnO2, and 60 meV exciton binding energy. For the development of unique devices, highly oriented and ordered arrays in ZnO nanostructures creation is of pivotal importance. In this research paper, ZnO nanostructures like nanorods and nanospines were seen to be developed on glass substrate. It has been developed by integrating low-cost SILAR and CBD methods. To obtain good optical quality of ZnO nanostructures, seed layer selection is vital for the application of nanoscale devices. ZnO films have been analyzed by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), in which along the c-axis, with preferential orientation, the hexagonal wurtzite crystalline structure has been identified. Nanorods having length 600–800 nm and a diameter of 150–200 nm, Nanospikes having a diameter range from 200 to 300 nm can be observed in the Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) results. Intense UV peak at 391 nm is exhibited with weak visible emission ranging 420–560 nm can be observed by photoluminescence measurements (PL) of ZnO nanostructures at room temperature. The influence of morphology has been discussed of seed layer augmentation of ZnO.