Hydrothermal Grow of Cu doped ZnO Nanorods for Large Spectrum Photocatalyst

In this paper we discuss the synthesis process of Cu doped ZnO nanorods on a glass substrate for photocatalyst. A hydrothermal grow of ZnO was initially experimented with the assistance of pre-coated ZnO seeding layers which is considered as simple and low-cost process. The ZnO nanorods structures with additional Cu doping were then successfully synthesized using similar method. The effects of growing time and concentration of the copper dopant were investigated in this work. The surface morphology of Cu doped ZnO NRs were characterized using field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), while the optical properties and optical band gap were analyzed using Ultra-violet Visible (UV-Vis), and Raman spectroscopy, respectively. The FESEM result showed that nanorods sizes on glass substrate increased with the growing time. Meanwhile, the hexagonal structure of ZnO nanorods was confirmed by Raman shift of 433 peak which shows the typical structure of ZnO. Moreover, The Cu doped ZnO nanorods showed high absorbance in UV and visible region, and optical band gap of about 3.15 eV.