ZnO nanowires grown by chemical deposition and rapid photothermal processing

Abstract

Chemical deposition aqueous method has been developed to synthesize a new generation of smart and functional nanostructured zinc oxide thin films. This chemical process uses stable and inexpensive metal inorganic salts and solvents in a heterogeneous reaction, without additional template materials to obtain ZnO thin films with different morphologies. The nanosized structures of ZnO are obtained to analyze the physical and structural requirements of their applications in gas sensors. Post-growth photothermal annealing of nanostructured zinc oxide at 650ºC in N2 leads to the suppression of deep-defect-level emission and improvement of near-band edge emission and is ascribed to the decrease in structure defects as compared to the initial nanostructure. The sensing behavior of the nanostructured elements to methanol is investigated.