Nucleation and growth of chrysanthemum-like zinc oxide crystals using silicon dioxide.

The chrysanthemum-like ZnO crystal has been grown by dry oxidation process in the sol-gel method. The samples have been characterised using SEM and XRD. The surface morphology of SEM result shows that the structure is like a chrysanthemum flower. The chrysanthemum-like crystal has been synthesised and composed of one-dimensional nanorods which have hexagonal wurtzite structure. It is also shown that the nanorods were preferentially grown along the [001] direction. In this paper, the growth mechanism and synthesis technique of chrysanthemum-like nanostructured ZnO are explained in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]