Growth of ZnO Nanorods Synthesized via Chemical Bath Deposition at Different Reaction Times and Precursor Concentrations

Abstract The characteristics of ZnO grown via chemical bath deposition on an FTO glass substrate at different reaction time and precursors concentration have been examined. The ZnO seed was firstly spin coated at 500 rpm for 5 seconds onto an FTO glass substrate and then at 3000 rpm for another 30 seconds. The coated substrate was heated at 130 °C to remove the solvent. The growth of ZnO nanorods was performed via chemical bath deposition (CBD) at various precursor concentrations and reaction times. The morphology of the obtained ZnO nanorods were characterized using a field-emission electron microscope (FE-SEM) equipped with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) to reveal the morphology and elemental composition of the nanorods, whereas X-ray diffraction (XRD) was used to examine the crystal structure. The results showed that the ZnO products have nanorod structure and sizes for each concentration. The results of this morphology were supported by the results from XRD. XRD patterns revealed that the formation of nanostructure of ZnO has been obtained at the reaction time of 2 hours, however, the optimum formation time was proven to be at 3 hours. The results also revealed that ZnO nanorods with a precursor concentration of 0.0375 M has the optimum formation of ZnO nanorod in terms of size and distribution of the nanorods.