Ergonomic Synthesis Suitable for Industrial Production of Silver-Festooned Zinc Oxide Nanorods

Abstract

For maximizing productivity, minimizing cost, time-boxing process and optimizing human effort, a single-step, cost-effective, ultra-fast and environmentally benign synthesis suitable for industrial production of nanocrystalline ZnO , and Ag -doped ZnO has been reported in this paper. The synthesis based on microwave-supported aqueous solution method used zinc acetate dehydrate and silver nitrate as precursors for fabrication of nanorods. The synthesized products were characterized by X-ray diffractometry (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Raman spectroscopy and UV-Vis–NIR spectroscopy. The undoped and Ag -doped ZnO nanorods crystallized in a hexagonal wurtzite structure having spindle-like morphology. The blue shift occurred at absorption edge of Ag -doped ZnO around 260 nm compared to 365 nm of bulk ZnO . The red shift occurred at Raman peak site of 434 cm-1 compared to characteristic wurtzite phase peak of ZnO (437 cm-1). The bandgap energies were found to be 3.10 eV, 3.11 eV and 3.18 eV for undoped, 1% Ag -doped, and 3% Ag -doped ZnO samples, respectively. The TEM results provided average particle sizes of 17 nm, 15 nm and 13 nm for undoped, and 1% and 3% Ag -doped ZnO samples, respectively.