Facile hydrothermal synthesis of flowerlike ZnOnanorods without catalysts

Abstract

A very simple hydrothermal method (one step) was used at low temperature to synthesis flower-like ZnOnanorods on glass substrate without any template, catalyst or buffer layer before the reaction. Flower-like ZnOnanorods were synthesized by hydrothermally heating 0.1 M precursor solution of hexahedral zinc nitrate Zn(NO3)2.6H2O, hexamethylenetetramine (HMT) and NaOH were the starting materials for the chemical reaction under stirring. The field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) images showed that the flower-like structures were formed in 3.5 h hydrothermally-heated for sample, whereas the experimental pattern of the films by X-ray diffraction show that diffraction peaks can be assigned to the wurtzite hexagonal-shaped ZnO as shown in the (FE-SEM) images, also the morphology of the films studied by atomic force microscope (AFM) shows that the films have high roughness. The energy gap was estimated and optical behavior was investigated