Real-time optical monitoring of zinc-oxide nanowires in-situ growth within a microfluidic chamber

In this work, we report a fast and efficient in-situ growth method of Zinc-Oxide nanowires (ZnO-NWs) and the real-time monitoring of NW growth over wide microfluidic chambers. The ZnO-NW hydrothermal synthesis is carried out in dynamic mode involving a continuous flow of the growth solution inside the microfluidic chamber. The biomimetic flow distribution tree is designed as input and output stages for the chamber to ensure uniform distribution of growth solution flow aiming to produce uniform NWs on the wide chamber. The real time monitoring is achieved by continuous acquisition of UV-vis spectra of the ZnO-NWs during the growth, which is achieved for the first time to the best of the author's knowledge.