Thermally decomposition of high quality flower-like ZnO nanorods from zinc acetate dihydrate

• High purity flowerlike ZnO nanorods have been synthesized by thermal decomposition.
• ZnO nanorods show bandgap about 3.37 eV for all samples.
• An enhancement of defect induced green–yellow visible emission was observed by PL.
• Raman spectra performed for vibrational band studies & verified quality of ZnO nanorods.

In the present work, high purity flower-like ZnO nano-rods have been synthesized by thermal decomposition method maintained at 300 °C in air without using any organic solvent additive surfactant or catalyst. The phase and structural analysis were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) which confirmed the high crystal quality of ZnO with hexagonal (Wurtzite phase) crystal structure. The morphology was carried out by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) which indicates that the formation of well-formed ZnO nanorods as a flower-like ZnO structure. The optical bandgap of synthesized ZnO nanorods found as 3.37 eV for all samples by using UV–vis absorption spectra and further verified by diffuse reflectance spectroscopy analysis. The room-temperature photoluminescence (PL) spectrum of all samples shows strong UV emission peak at ~384 nm and a weak broad green–yellow due to the defects in the samples. The Raman spectroscopy was performed for the studies of vibrational bands and the quality of the crystalline structure of flower-like ZnO nanorods.