Modelling the growth of zinc oxide nanostructures

Abstract

Zinc oxide is known to produce a wide variety of nanostructures that show promise for a number of applications. The use of electrochemical deposition techniques for growing ZnO nanostructures can allow tight control of the morphology of ZnO through the wide range of deposition parameters available. Here we model the growth of the rods under typical electrochemical conditions, using the Nernst-–Planck equations in two dimensions to predict the growth rate and morphology of the nanostructures as a function of time. Generally good quantitative and qualitative agreement is found between the model predictions and recent experimental results. doi:10.1017/S1446181109000157