title: Low-temperature solution growth of ZnO nanocone/highly oriented nanorod arrays on copper.
abstract: Solution-phase approaches to one-dimensional (1D) ZnO nanostructure arrays are appealing because of their good potential for scale-up. Allowing for a wide variety of substrate material compatibility and saving energy, it is very essential to further research the low-temperature growth process of 1D ZnO nanostructure arrays and its detailed growth mechanism. In this study, large-scale misaligned hexagonal ZnO nancone arrays were synthesized on bare copper foil, while large-scale well-aligned, and highly oriented ZnO nanorod arrays were grown on seeded copper foil through a facile solution processing method at normal atmospheric pressure at 35 °C. X-ray diffraction analysis verified the crystalline nature of the ZnO nanocone/nanorods, and transmission electron microscopy further confirmed the single-crystal nature and the preferential growth direction of the ZnO nanocone/nanorods. The room-temperature photoluminescence measurement qualitatively identified the intrinsic point defects in the ZnO nanocones/nanorods. Besides, the detailed growth behavior of ZnO was discussed with and without a ZnO seed layer, which provides useful information to propose the growth mechanism of the nanocone/nanorods in the low-temperature solution. The method developed here can be easily scaled up to fabricate ZnO nanostructures for many important applications in field emission display, gas sensors, and superhydrophobic surfaces.
authors.affiliation: Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Metallic Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Southeast University , Nanjing 211189, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yongmei
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.forename: Youfa
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Xinquan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Feng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Chen