Plasma Synthesis of Large Quantities of Zinc Oxide Nanorods

In this paper, ZnO nanorods with high yields were successfully synthesized using a radio frequency (RF) thermal plasma system in a one-step, continuous, and scalable way by the thermal evaporation of different zinc compounds, and the aspect ratio of synthesized nanorods could be well controlled by adjusting the feeding rates of starting materials and the oxygen flow rate in the process. The experimental results reveal that the growth mechanism of ZnO nanorods in the RF plasma reactor is governed by a wall-free and two-directional growth mechanism that is proposed for the first time in this paper. The plasma synthesis method provides a facile way to synthesize one-dimensional nanostructures of ZnO and other materials.