Rapid Synthesis of Semipolar ZnO Nanorod Arrays on M-Sapphire by Microwave-Assisted Chemical Bath Deposition

Abstract

Microwave-assisted chemical bath deposition (CBD) is a newly developed technique for fast growth of single-crystalline ZnO nanorods in a solution containing zinc nitrate at temperature below 100 degrees C. ZnO nanorods have many applications for devices, however, semipolar oriented ZnO nanorods have been rarely reported. In this study, epitaxial growth of well-aligned arrays of inclined semipolar ZnO nanorods on a ZnO seed layer on m-plane sapphire substrates is successfully fabricated by using microwave-assisted chemical bath deposition for 10 min at 90 degrees C. TEM analysis reveals that The ZnO nanorods have an inclined angle about 30 degrees with m-sapphire surface and an average length about 500 nm which gives a growth rate of 3 mu m/h. Micro-photoluminescence measurements show that ZnO nanorods are of a reasonably good quality.