Growth of Zinc Oxide Nanorods Using Various Seed Layer Annealing Temperatures and Substrate Materials

We fabricated zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorods (NRs) with ZnO seed layers by using the sol-gel solution method with various annealing temperatures on different substrate materials (silicon, glass, and fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) coated glass). Within a certain range of seed annealing temperatures, the alignment and length of the NRs were significantly improved. However, the growth rate of the NRs was less affected by the substrate material at a fixed seed annealing temperature. From X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements, the NRs grown on the silicon substrate exhibited better crystallinity than those grown on the glass and FTO coated glass substrates. During the growth process for the NRs, the self-attraction phenomenon occurred, which led to a decrease in the NR density and improved the alignment, resulting in a highly c-axis oriented ZnO NR growth on the substrate