Structure, morphology and photocatalytic activity of ZnO nanorods fabricated by electrochemical deposition
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Structure, morphology and photocatalytic activity of ZnO nanorods fabricated by electrochemical deposition Mansour Mohamed1,2 · Abdullah S. Alshammari1 · M. Almokhtar2 Received: 9 June 2020 / Accepted: 30 June 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract We report the investigation of structure, morphology, photocatalytic degradation of methyl blue using ZnO nanorods (NRs). The ZnO NRs samples were fabricated using electrochemical deposition from aqueous solution of zinc nitrate and hexamethylenetetramine on ITO substrates. The effect of the growth time on the structure, morphology and photocatalytic properties of ZnO NRs was investigated in details.XRD analysis showed that the fabricated NRs have hexagonal wurtzite structure and growth direction along the (002) plane. The morphology of the prepared samples investigated by SEM showed that growth rate of the NRs depends on the time of the growth. The surface area and cross-sectional area of the fabricated ZnO NRs increased with increasing the growth time and led to improvements in the NRs aspect ratios. It was also found that the photocatalytic activity of the grown nanorods enhances by increasing the deposition time. The present results are discussed in terms of the observed structural morphology of the investigated ZnO NRs and correlated with the photocatalytic performance of the grown NRs. Keywords ZnO nanorods · Electrochemical deposition · Photocatalysis
1 Introduction ZnO is one of the widely studied materials because of its interesting physical properties and numerous technological applications [1–4]. In addition, it is characterized as a semiconductor material with wide band gap of about 3.3 eV and possess large excitonic binding energy = 60 meV which makes it a very promising material for UV lasing applications [5]. Furthermore, ZnO can be a candidate material for different applications, including, gas-sensing devices and solar cells [6–9]. The ZnO nanorods are among the most interesting ZnO structures and have been utilized in various promising applications [10]. They have been fabricated with different expensive methods such as chemical vapor deposition and metal organic chemical vapor deposition [11–13]. Recently, the electrochemical method is commonly used for the fabrication of ZnO nanorods due to its green, inexpensive, * Mansour Mohamed [email protected] 1
Department of Physics, College of Science, University of Hail, P.O. Box 2440, Hail, Saudi Arabia
Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Assiut University, Assiut 71516, Egypt
2
low temperature, easy control of growth and morphology [14, 15]. Furthermore, the structure and morphology of the fabricated materials using electrochemical deposition method can be controlled by various parameters including the electrolyte type, concentration, temperature, deposition time, applied potential or current and substrate type [15, 16]. For example, the applied potential has been utilized by Tezcan et al. to control the morphology and the thickness of the electroch
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