Growth of arrayed ZnO nanowires using a solution method

In this paper, we report a simple solution method to synthesize well-aligned ZnO nanowires (NWs) arrays on silicon substrate with ZnO seed layer. We can control the morphology of ZnO NWs arrays by adjusting growth parameters, such as the thickness of the seed layer, the concentration of the solution, the growth temperature, the growth time and the pretreatment, etc. The size of ZnO NWs will change regularly according to the these parameters, too, for example, results show that the diameter and alignment will upgrade as the thickness of the seed layers increased, and the length and diameter will increase as the concentration, temperature and growth time increased. What's more, the ultrasonic pretreatment of the solution mixture and the precleaning of the substrate in the reaction solution will enhance the uniformity of ZnO NWs significantly. This synthesis technique can be carried out at low temperature, low cost and large scale on any substrates.