Room‐Temperature Zinc Oxide Nanorods Fabrication by Seedless and Catalyst‐Free Pulsed Laser Deposition

The synthesis of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorods has attracted considerable attention due to their distinct structural and optoelectronic properties, particularly for ultraviolet (UV) emission and radiation detection. Conventional ZnO nanorod growth typically requires a seed layer or metal catalyst to control nucleation and orientation, but these additional layers can introduce unwanted contamination that degrades optical performance, an important limitation for scintillator applications. In this work, we demonstrate a seedless and catalyst‐free approach for the room‐temperature growth of ZnO nanorods using off‐axis pulsed laser deposition (PLD) under a controlled partial oxygen atmosphere. The growth is attributed to defect‐mediated nucleation arising from island coalescence and intrinsic point defects. The resulting nanorods were characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy‐dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), Raman spectroscopy, UV–visible absorption, and photoluminescence (PL). Low‐temperature postannealing (300C) increased the nanorod density while preserving their morphology, whereas high‐temperature annealing (500C) promoted coarsening and structural degradation. The as‐grown nanorods exhibit a strong, narrow near‐band‐edge (NBE) emission at 378 nm with minimal deep‐level luminescence, indicating high optical quality. These findings highlight room‐temperature, contamination‐free PLD as a simple and versatile route for ZnO nanorod fabrication and suggest promising potential for fast and efficient scintillator detector applications.