Fabrication and properties of sulfur (S)-doped ZnO nanorods

Highly-aligned sulfur (S)-doped ZnO nanorods have been grown using the hydrothermal approach at 90 °C for 2 h onto quartz substrate pre-coated with ZnO seed layer deposited by radio frequency magnetron sputtering system. The morphology, crystal structure, and transmittance of the S-doped ZnO nanorods grown with varied sulfur concentration have been investigated. The scanning electron microscope images showed that the S-doped ZnO nanorods dimension is affected by sulfur doping. The nanorods doped with sulfur concentration of ~1, 1.5, and 2 at.% found to show nanorods with an average diameter of ~130, 170, and 270 nm respectively. X-ray diffraction measurements revealed that the sulfur-doped ZnO nanorods have hexagonal-wurtzite crystal structure and grown vertically in the (002) plane along c-axis perpendicular to the substrate. The nanorods doped with 1 at.% sulfur showed ~70 % transmittance in the visible region while the nanorods doped with 2 at.% sulfur showed transmittance of ~77 % and exhibited blue shift in the fundamental absorption edge.