Surfactant-assisted route to synthesize well-aligned ZnO nanorod arrays on sol-gel-derived ZnO thin films

A soft chemical approach to fabricate long and vertically aligned ZnO nanorod arrays with crystallographic orientation over sol-gel-derived ZnO a thin film is reported. The ZnO nanorods have displayed a strong ultraviolet (UV) emission peak and the field emission studies of the well-aligned nanorod arrays have displayed a low turn-on field of 1.7 V/micro m to get an emission current density of 0.1 [mu]A/[cm.sub.2].