Fabrication of Zinc Oxide Nanorod by Chemical Bath Deposition Methods For

Transparent Heater Application

Abstract

Transparent heaters have been used widely for military ground-based, airplane windows panels,
off-shore oil plat forms, and periscopes. We fabricated transparent heaters based on zinc oxide
nanorods thin film by chemical bath deposition method. We obtained a sheet resistance of a thin
film of zinc oxide nanorods of 49 ohm/s and 80% transmittance after hydrothermal treatment.
This thin film obtained a temperature 70 0C within 5 min at an applied voltage of 8 V. These
results of the study showed that this thin film can be applied as a transparent heater.
1. Introduction
Currently, technological developments are inseparable from the use of thin film
engineering. One of them is a transparent conductive thin film that is applied as a
transparent heater. Transparent heater has been widely applied as military ground-based,
airplane windows panels, off-shore oil plate forms, and periscopes.). Indium tin oxide
(ITO) thin film is generally used as a transparent heater in the industry [1, 2]. However,
ITO has its disadvantages as its fabrication process very complicated and brittle. So far,
the materials as a substitute for ITO have been studied intensively such as thin fluorine
oxide (SnO2: F or FTO) [3], carbon nanotubes[4-6], graphene nanosheets [4, 5], silver
nanowires [6-8] and hybrid systems [9, 10]. In addition, one of the materials used as a
transparent heater is zinc oxide (ZnO). ZnO has chemical and thermal stability, excellent
optical and electrical properties and is easily synthesized into nanostructured such as
nanorods, nanowires, nanotubes or nano flowers.). Kim et al. [11] has succeeded in
making transparent heater of Galium doped ZnO (GZO) by radio frequency method (rf) -
magnetron sputtering and Ahn et al. [12] capable of improving the transparent heater
performance of the GZO layer by pulsed laser method. Meanwhile, Shanming Ke et al
[13] managed to fabricate transparent heater from Alumunium doped ZnO using pulsed
laser deposition method.
ZnO nanorod is of great interest because of their unique optical and electrical properties
so it has the potential to be applied as a transparent heater. ZnO nanorod can be
fabricated by various methods such as chemical bath deposition [14], RF sputtering[15],
spray pyrolysis [16], metal chemical vapor deposition [17], vapor phase transport [18]
and pulsed laser deposition [19]. Among these fabrication methods, chemical bath
deposition is one of the synthesis methods for the fabrication of ZnO nanorod which is
more effective and efficient because it has advantages such as reproducibility, simplicity,
non-hazardous, takes place at low temperature and low cost. Furthermore, chemical bath
deposition method is suitable for fabricating large area of thin film. Therefore, in this
research will be fabrication of ZnO nanorod thin film on silica glass substrate using
chemical bath deposition method for transparent heater application and the effect of
 hydrothermal and non-hydrothermal treatment on the resulting transparent heater
performance.

2. Experimental Details
2.1 Materials and Methods
The silica glass (Corning, Eagle 2000) is utilized as substrates for growing ZnO
nanorods. The glass substrates were ultrasonically cleaned in deionized water, acetone
and ethanol for 8 min respectively and dried in air. After that, the seed solution was
prepared by dissolving 1:1 equimolar zinc nitrate tetrahydrate (Zn(NO3)2.4H2O, Merck)
and hexamethylene tetraamine (C6H12N4/HMTA, Merck) 0.01 M in water at 0°C, which
was then allowed to stand for 1 hour in a cooler bath equipped with an automatic
temperature controller. Then seed solution was spin – coated on the glass substrate with a
speed 2000 rpm for 20 seconds and further annealed at 2000C for 5 min. The next process
is the growth of ZnO nanorod on glass substrate prepared by chemical bath deposition.
The annealed substrate is placed vertically into the seed solution at 900C for 3 hours.
Furthermore, the glass substrate was washed using distilled water and dried in air. The
final result of the CBD synthesized ZnO nanorod layer is termed as sample X.
Hydrothermal treatment was performed by placing the substrate with the ZnO layer on
top of boiling water in a reactor. The ZnO layer was placed upside down, facing the
bottom of the reactor in a muffle furnace at a temperature of 150°C for 3 hours at
atmospheric pressure. The resulting ZnO nanorod layer is coded as sample Y.
2.2 Characterization
The characterize structure crystal of thin film ZnO nanorod was confirmed by X-ray
diffraction (XRD, Shimadzu X-Ray Diffractometer 7000). Surface morphology images of
the substrates were obtained with field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM
JEOL JIB tipe 4610F). The optical transmissions properties of the sample were measured
using UV-Vis Spectrophotometer (Perkin Elmer; 200-700 nm). The electrical properties
of thin film ZnO nanorod was determined using four - point probe method. The
temperature portrait was captured using an infrared camera (FLIR)
2.3. Testing Transparent Heater System
 Transparent heaters were fabricated by cutting the substrate into 25 mm × 25 mm section.
Copper tapes (5 mm × 25 mm) were attached to each edge of the heater films. A variable
DC power supply (Ji Sang Electric Co. 500 V, 1A) equipped with a volt and ampere
meter and a thermocouple were used to measure the current, voltage, and temperature
increase on the surface of the heater window.
3. Results and Discussions
Figure 1 show optical transmittance spectrum of sample in the visible wave length 300-
675 nm. At a wavelength of 400 nm, all samples exhibited optical transmittance of more
than 50%. The lowest transmittance value is obtained for ZnO nanorod thin film
hydrothermal treatment of 59, 43% because of the crystallite size of ZnO nanorod thin
film with hydrothermal treatment is greater than that of thin film crystallite ZnO nanorod
with non-hydrothermal treatment. The transmittance of the ZnO nanorod films increases
when the crystallite size is smaller due to decreased optical scattering [20].

100

90

80
T ra n s m itta n c e (% )

70

60

50

40 H idrote rm al
N on -H id ro term al
30 B are
20

10

0
300 325 350 375 400 425 450 475 500 525 550 575 600 625 650 675
wave len g th (n m )

Figure 1. Visible optical transmittance spectra of bare silica glass, ZnO nanorod thin film
with non-hydrothermal and ZnO nanorod film with hydrothermal treatment.
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