Morphological characteristic of Zn/ZnO nanopowders and the optical properties

ZnO tetrapod nanowhiskers have been brought many interests for their intriguing properties in recent years. The present study investigated the synthesis of Zn/ZnO nanowhiskers by means of evaporating the Zn powder with a size of 15 μm in the atmosphere of pure Ar or the mixture gas of Ar and O2 at a pressure of 1.6 or 10 kPa, respectively. The produced tetrapod nanowhiskers usually have four needle-like feet that originate from the center of the polyhedron. The nanowhiskers display a fantastic optical property of absorbing nearly all far infrared light at the wavelength range from 800 nm·to 2500 nm, which is totally different from nanoparticles.