Large-scale synthesis of ZnO nanorods by different surfactant-assisted and low-temperature process

In this work, ZnO nanorods have been successfully synthesized by employing ZnCl2, NaOH as the starting materials by using different surfactants (including CTAB, SDS and SDBS), without using template supporting and structure-directing solvent at a low temperature (60 up to 90 degrees C). X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used to analyze the crystal structure and surface morphology. XRD pattern analysis showed that the ZnO clusters are single hexagonal phase of wurtzite structure with no impurity of others. Also, TEM images revealed that the size of a single ZnO nanorod is between 20 nm and 40 nm in diameter and between 200 nm and 2 tun in length. The structures, growth mechanism and the PL spectra properties of ZnO microcrystals are investigated.