Ultrafast microwave-assisted synthesis of various zinc oxide nanostructures

The conventional hydrothermal process for the synthesis of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanostructures has been a slow process and provides less control in terms of shape, size and nucleation time. Whereas, synthesis through microwave heating takes only a few minutes to produce high quality, ultra-pure zinc oxide nanostructures. In this study, we have presented a protocol to fabricate various ZnO nanostructures (vertically-aligned nanorods, vertically-aligned nanowalls, nano flowers and nanopillars) using a domestic microwave oven. Based upon the process study, variation in diameter and length of vertically aligned ZnO nanorods with growth time has been reported. Uniformly distributed ZnO nanowalls along with ZnO nanoflowers have been fabricated in less than 5 minutes. In addition to this, ZnO nanopillars have been fabricated for the first-time using evaporation and degradation phenomena in themicrowave oven. Furthermore,the ZnO nanorods have been found to exhibit a super hydrophobic behaviour, whereas the ZnO nanowalls, nanoflowers and nanopillars have shown a hydrophobic behaviour. The developed ZnO nanostructures may have been found their applications in the areas of optics, electronics, biomedical, solar cell, sensors and transistors etc.