Growth mechanism of one-dimensional zinc sulfide nanostructures through electrophoretic deposition

In this paper, we show experimental evidence about the growth mechanism of one-dimensional ZnS nanostructures through electrophoretic deposition. ZnS nanoparticles with 20 nm of mean diameter were prepared by microwave-assisted synthesis using sodium citrate as the stabilizer. The resulting aqueous dispersion was deposited without any further preparation by means of electrophoretic methods using aluminum plates as electrodes under 600 mV in order to avoid bubble formation. FE-SEM images of different deposition times confirm the previously proposed mechanism of lyosphere distortion and thinning and the subsequent dipole–dipole interactions’ phenomena where the incoming particles are oriented by the particles previously deposited. In this mechanism, the first particle/lyosphere deposited acts as a dipole and attract the incoming particles to it, creating a one-dimensional nanostructure after some time of deposition. These results can help understand the different mechanisms of the electrophoretic deposition and are useful for future nanostructure designs of semiconductor materials.