Structural and luminescent properties of ZnO nanorods prepared from aqueous solution

A simple method to fabricate the one-dimensional nanostructure of zinc oxide nanorods from aqueous solution was presented. ZnO nanorods, prepared under different concentrations of precursors, were characterized by techniques such as XRD and SEM. The results indicated that the ZnO nanorods were single crystalline and grown in the direction of [001] with the hexagonal wurtzite structure. Photoluminescence measurement of the ZnO nanorods was carried out and it showed that a strong near-band-gap emission dominated the PL spectra with several weak emission peaks related to the deep level. We also analyzed the effect of the concentration of precursors on the luminescent properties of ZnO nanorods. In addition, the growth mechanism of ZnO nanorods from aqueous solution was preliminarily discussed.