Nanometer-scale sharpening and surface roughening of ZnO nanorods by argon ion bombardment

We report the effects of exposing a hydrothermally grown, single crystalline ZnO nanorod array to a beam of 50 keV argon ions at room temperature. High resolution electron microscopy reveals that the ion bombardment results in a nanometer-scale roughening of the nanorod sidewalls, which were almost atomically flat in the pristine sample. Ion bombardment further causes the flat, ≈100 nm diameter nanorod tips to get sharpened to ultrafine points less than 10 nm across. While tip sharpening is attributed to preferential sputtering, the formation of crystalline surface protuberances can be ascribed to surface instability due to curvature dependent sputtering and surface diffusion under argon-ion bombardment. Both the nanoscale roughening as well as the tip sharpening are expected to favorably impact a wide variety of applications, such as those involving catalysis, gas sensing, solar cells, field emission and gas discharge.