Morphological evolution of hydrothermally derived ZnO nano and microstructures

ZnO nanorods with flowerlike morphologies were synthesized via hydrothermal route. The observations depicted that the as-synthesized flowerlike morphology of ZnO consisted of numerous nanorods. The length of nanorod is in the range of 2–3 μm, and the diameter ∼ 150–200 nm. The ZnO product was crystallized with hexagonal crystal structure. High resolution transmission microscopy image and electron diffraction pattern revealed a single crystalline nature altogether (0001) direction growth. The photoluminescence spectrum showed a near band edge UV emission peak and defect related blue emission peak in the visible region. Furthermore, the experimental results revealed that the extended reaction period and zinc precursor used in reaction mixture played an inevitable role in the morphological evolution of ZnO nano-/microstructures.