Raman scattering and photoluminescence studies of ZnO nanowhiskers assembled as flowers in the presence of fullerene

•ZnO nanowhiskers are synthetize at 85 °C from aqueous solution of Zn(OH)42− ions.•The addition of C60 in the reaction mixture leads to the ZnO flowers formation.•Compounds based on C60 have a key-role in the assembling process of the ZnO whiskers.•The intermediary compound ZnC60 is characterized by the Raman line at 1594 cm−1.

In this work, the architecture of ZnO particles was found to be changed from nano-whiskers to flowers via the addition of fullerenes in the reaction mixture consisting of zinc chloride, sodium hydroxide and sodium dodecyl sulfate. The change in the morphological structure of ZnO particles is accompanied by a decrease in the photoluminescence (PL) intensity and the appearance of a new Raman line at 1594 cm−1 that indicates the formation of the compound ZnC60. The growth of the ZnO flower-like particles occurs simultaneously with an aggregation process of C60 in highly ordered structures, as evidenced in the Raman spectrum by a line at 2934 cm−1. A mechanism for the growth of the ZnO flower-like particles is proposed in this work.