Electrochemical synthesis of nanostructured ZnO films utilizing self-assembly of surfactant molecules at solid-liquid interfaces

Kyoung-Shin Choi; Helga C Lichtenegger; Galen D Stucky; Eric W McFarland

doi:10.1021/ja0275562

Electrochemical synthesis of nanostructured ZnO films utilizing self-assembly of surfactant molecules at solid-liquid interfaces

J Am Chem Soc. 2002 Oct 23;124(42):12402-3. doi: 10.1021/ja0275562.

Authors

Kyoung-Shin Choi¹, Helga C Lichtenegger, Galen D Stucky, Eric W McFarland

Affiliation

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.

PMID: 12381168
DOI: 10.1021/ja0275562

Abstract

An electrochemical synthesis strategy for the production of nanostructured films was developed by combining self-assembly of surfactant-inorganic aggregates at solid-liquid interfaces and an electrodeposition process. Through this approach high quality nanostructured ZnO films were cathodically deposited from a plating solution containing 0.1 wt % of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). The resulting ZnO films possess lamellar structures with two different repeat distances, d001 = 31.7 A and d001* = 27.5 A, both of which feature well-defined long range order. Due to kinetically controlled surfactant-inorganic assembly during the deposition process, the film exhibits a wide distribution of the stacking directions of the ZnO layers, which will allow facile access of the guest molecules and analytes to the interlayers. The synthetic mechanism used here can be generalized to generate nanostructured films of other semiconducting and metallic materials with architectures that cannot be assembled by other means.