Study of Zinc Oxide nano/micro rods grown on ITO and glass substrates

Highly oriented multilinked ZnO nano and micro rods were deposited using aqueous solution growth technique on ITO and glass substrates. Their study provides a basic understanding of effect of the base material on the growth of nanorods. An equimolar aqueous solution of Zinc nitrate and hexamine (HMT) was used for the preparation of ZnO nanorods arrays. ZnO was deposited on ITO and glass substrates after establishing the optimal pH and concentration, which yield the best substrate coverage for precursor solution. To achieve uniform growth and high density of ZnO nanorods, the prepared solution was heated at certain constant temperature. The experimental results have been obtained by using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), X-ray diffractometer (XRD) and Fluorescence Spectroscope which shows highly oriented nanorods perpendicular to the surface of substrates and a comparative study of ITO and glass grown nanorod arrays shows that the structural chemistry of the substrate clearly affects the growth nanostructures. The high variation in optical properties can be attributed by the heating temperatures and limited presence of reactants available for the controlled growth on substrates. It is also observed confined and decreased particle size with enhanced nucleation on ITO substrate as compared to glass. Due to the physical limitations in the growth, this kinetically controlled nucleation would be responsible for producing the highly uniform, dense and perpendicularly oriented nanorods.