Growth of zinc oxide nanoflowers by thermal evaporation method

An alternative method for site-selective growth of ZnO nanostructures that does not use an Au catalyst or a ZnO thin-film seed layer is presented. Well-aligned ZnO nanoflower structure arrays were directly fabricated on silicon substrates through zinc powder evaporation, which uses a simple thermal evaporation method without a catalyst. The collected ZnO nanoflowers were then characterized through X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The optical properties of these nanostructured materials are also discussed.