Controlling Diameter, Length and Characterization of ZnO Nanorods by Simple Hydrothermal Method for Solar Cells

Abstract

Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorods have been synthesized by solution processing hydrothermal method in low temperature using the spin coating technique. Zinc acetate dehydrate, Zinc nitrate hexahydrate and hexamethylenetetramine were used as a starting material. The ZnO seed layer was first deposited by spin coated of ethanol zinc acetate dehydrate solution on a glass substrate. ZnO nanorods were grown on the ZnO seed layer from zinc nitrate hexahydrate and hexamethylene-tetramine solution, and their diameters, lengths were controlled by precursor concentration and development time. From UV-Visible spectrometry the optical band gap energy of ZnO nanorods was calculated to be 3.3 eV. The results of X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) showed the highly oriented nature of ZnO nanorods the hardest (002) peak reflects that c-axis elongated nanorods are oriented normal to the glass substrate. The Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM) was employed to measure both of average diameter of ZnO nanorods, Energy Dispersive X-Ray (EDX) is used to identify the elemental present and to determine the element composition in the samples.