Decoupling of Nucleation and Growth of ZnO nano-colloids in solution

TL;DR

This study investigates the rapid nucleation and morphological stability of ZnO nano-colloids, revealing decoupled nucleation and growth processes influenced by reaction balance, modeled via phase-field simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of ZnO nano-colloid growth, highlighting decoupled nucleation and growth mechanisms and applying phase-field modeling to interpret the process.

Findings

Nucleation occurs within 10 seconds after mixing.

Morphology remains stable during growth, depending on interfacial energy.

Decoupling observed in atomically unbalanced reactions.

Abstract

In this paper, temporal growth and morphological evolution of ZnO nano-colloids were studied by in-situ UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) respectively. Nucleation of the nanoparticles was observed to occur within 10 sec in the solution after mixing the precursors and there was not any significant change in morphology observed with an increase in growth time. The morphological change was found to depend on interfacial energy curvature. Decoupling of nucleation and growth parameters was observed in the case of the atomically unbalanced reaction while aging of the nanoparticles was found in atomically balanced reaction respectively. The growth of nano-particles was modeled using the Phase-field model (PFM) and compared with the present in-situ growth process.