A facile one-step method for synthesising a parallelogram-shaped single-crystalline ZnO nanosheet

• A simple method to synthesise ZnO nanosheets is described.
• Parallelogram-shaped ZnO nanosheets were obtained with single-crystalline structure.
• A specific mechanism of the growth was suggested.

ZnO nanosheets are found to be useful in many fields such as sensors and electronics. Non-uniform-shaped ZnO nanosheets are synthesised using several methods; moreover, uniformly shaped ones are less studied. Here, we report on a simple one-step method to synthesise parallelogram-shaped single-crystalline ZnO nanosheets. By controlling the reaction of Zn(NO3)2 and hexamethylenetetramine (HMT) in ethanol, average 30 nm-thick nanosheets with a high aspect ratio of 1:100 were obtained. The parallelogram angles were between 97° and 99°. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) diffraction and X-ray diffraction (XRD) showed that the nanosheets were wurtzite-structured single-crystalline ZnO. Moreover, a growth mechanism of these parallelogram nanosheets is suggested based on the experimental results. These results suggest a new simple solution process to synthesise uniformly shaped ZnO nanosheets allowing large-scale production to be employed.

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