In Situ Observation of the Growth of ZnO Nanostructures Using Liquid Cell Electron Microscopy

Abstract

Understanding the growth mechanisms and associated kinetics is a fundamental issue toward the specific function-oriented controlled synthesis of nanostructures. In this work, the growth of zinc oxide nanostructures with different sizes and morphologies are directly observed by in situ liquid-cell transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Real-time observation and quantitative analysis reveal that the concentration ratios of the precursors are responsible for the different growth kinetics, resulting in different morphology and size of the synthesized ZnO nanostructures