In Situ Monitoring of Laser-Assisted Hydrothermal Growth of ZnO Nanowires: Thermally Deactivating Growth Kinetics

The laser-assisted hydrothermal growth kinetics of a cluster of ZnO nanowires are studied based on optical in situ growth monitoring. The growth yields are orders of magnitude higher than those of conventional hydrothermal methods that use bulk heating. This remarkable improvement is attributed to suppression of precursor depletion occurring by homogeneous growth reactions, as well as to enhanced mass transport. The obtained in situ data show gradually decaying growth kinetics even with negligible precursor consumption. It is revealed that the growth deceleration is caused by thermal deactivation resulting from heat dissipation through the growing nanowires. Finally, it is demonstrated that the tailored temporal modulation of the input power enables sustained growth to extended dimensions. These results provide a key to highly efficient use of growth precursors that has been pursued for industrial use of this functional metal oxide semiconductor.