Hydrothermal growth of ZnO nanoparticles under different conditions

In this study, a simple lowerature hydrothermal method was used to synthesize ZnO nanoparticles. The structural, morphological and optical characterizations of the nanoparticles were evaluated with regard to the zinc content. To achieve this, the molar ratios of the precursors were changed from 0.05 to 0.1 M. The structural and morphological analyses showed that all samples had a polycrystalline hexangular wurtzite crystal structure and the shape of the ZnO nanoparticles changed with increasing zinc content. A possible growth mechanism of the ZnO nanoparticles is explained in terms of the zinc content. Optical measurement revealed that the shape of the nanoparticles affects the position of the band-edge emission as well as the shape of the luminescence spectrum. © 2016 Taylor and Francis.