Growth mechanism of spherical ZnO nanostructures synthesized via colloid chemistry

Nanostructured ZnO particles of size ∼118 nm were synthesized through a colloid chemistry approach. The characterization results show that the as-synthesized ZnO particles are spherical and that the particles consist of many small aggregated nano-entities of size of ∼10 nm. In this paper, the growth mechanism of this ZnO nanostructure is investigated in detail. It reveals that the unique nanostructure results from the dipole nature of ZnO on the nanometer scale. Understanding of the growth mechanism could be used to precisely manipulate this unique self-assembled nanostructure.