Growth behaviors of ZnO nanostructure on SMAT Cu_0.62Zn_0.38 during oxidation

¹ School of Materials Science & Engineering, Henan University of Science & Technology, Luoyang, Henan, PR. China
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hunghom, Kowloon, Hong Kong, P.R. China

^a e-mail: cjxu55@yahoo.com

Received: 10 December 2012
Revised: 9 February 2013
Accepted: 13 February 2013
Published online: 30 April 2013

Abstract

Cu_0.62Zn_0.38 foil was subjected to surface mechanical attrition treatment (SMAT) processing first. Growth behavior of ZnO nanostructure on the SMAT Cu_0.62Zn_0.38 surface during thermal oxidation was investigated in this paper. The original and SMAT Cu_0.62Zn_0.38 foils were thermally oxidized at 400 ~ 700 °C under various gaseous environments, including nitrogen and mixture of N₂-O₂ at a pressure of 1 atm. for 3 h. The oxidized specimens were characterized with a scanning electron microscope, an X-ray diffractometer and a transmission electron microscope. It is found that nanosheets are easily formed on the SMAT specimen surface. The favorable formation of nanosheets relates to twin lamellae structure of Cu_0.62Zn_0.38 formed during SMAT processing.