Properties of ZnO nanorods arrays growth via low temperature hydrothermal reaction

This work describes properties of 1-D ZnO nanorods arrays growth using low temperature hydrothermal method on a seeded substrate. The properties of ZnO seed were studied by varying thermal oxidation temperature from 250-450 degrees C. The formation of ZnO nanorods was studied by varying the growth time during hydrothermal process. The optimum oxidation temperature to produce seeded ZnO template was 400 degrees C. The formation of ZnO nanorods was further studied by varying hydrothermal reaction growth time from 1 to 24 hours. The optimum hydrothermal growth time of 4 hours produced blunt tip-like nanorods with length of similar to 735 nm and top diameter of similar to 66 nm. I-V characteristics of ZnO nanorods photodetector in dark, ambient light and UV light were also studied. The change in the photoconductivity under UV illumination was found to be 1 order of magnitude higher compared to dark and ambient light. With an incident wavelength of 370 nm and applied bias of 3V, the responsivity of photodetector was 5.0 mA/W, which was higher compared to other reported works. The increase of photosensitivity indicated that the produced ZnO nanorods were suitable for UV photodetector applications.