Abstract
Nano-ZnO plate-like morphology was successfully prepared via simple hydrothermal treatment by using zinc acetate as a zinc source and hexamethylenetetramine (HMTA) as structuring agent. Chemical composition, structural, morphological and optical properties of the as-prepared ZnO nanoplates were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), UV-vis spectroscopy and photoluminescence (PL). This study shows that the band gap of the ZnO nanoplates can be estimated to be 3.41 eV. The photoluminescence spectrum of nano-ZnO plates has identified several kinds of defects such as oxygen vacancy (V-O), zinc vacancy (V-Zn) and interstitial zinc (Zn-i). To further understand the influence of hexamethylenetetramine in the formation processes of the nano-ZnO, we propose apossible growthmechanism to describe the different steps.