Effect of Magnetized Ethanol on the Shape Evolution of Zinc Oxide from Nanoparticles to Microrods: Experimental and Molecular Dynamic Simulation Study

In the current research, ethanol was exposed to an external magnetic field, called magnetized ethanol, and then, used as a solvent in the solvothermal method to synthesize various ZnO structures. Moreover, the morphologies of the synthesized structures are compared with those obtained using ordinary ethanol. The attained results evidently demonstrated the formation of ZnO nanoparticles and microrods by using ordinary and magnetized ethanol, respectively. Moreover, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were utilized for characterizing the synthesized ZnO structures. The XRD results demonstrated that the synthesized products are in Zincite hexagonal phase. Besides, molecular dynamics simulation suggested that the molecular mobility is diminished upon using the magnetic field. It was found that the interactions among ZnO particles were enhanced by the slight increase in the magnetic field while the number of interactions between ZnO and solvent was reduced revealing the magnetic-field-induced particle growth from the molecular level insight.