Growth kinetics of ZnO nanocrystals: A few surprises

The extensive state-of-the-art experiments over a wide range of synthesis parameters are used to study the qualitatively different growth kinetics for ZnO nanocrystals, as compared to the kinetics of all other semiconducting nanocrystals. The results show that the formation of an effective passivating layer around the growing nanocrystals inhibits the reaction, instead of facilitating it, hence giving all the different results and observations.