OICC Press Journal of Nanostructure in Chemistry 2193-8865 7 1 (March 2017) 2017 01 23 Perforated ZnO nanoflakes as a new feature of ZnO achieved by the hydrothermal-assisted sol–gel technique 10.1007/s40097-017-0215-8 EN Zahra Khaghanpour Department of Materials Engineering, Shahreza Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahreza, Isfahan Province, IR Sanaz Naghibi Department of Materials Engineering, Shahreza Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahreza, Isfahan Province, IR Journal Article 2017 01 23 Abstract The perforated ZnO nanoflakes with high degree of crystallinity and uniformity were synthesized via the hydrothermal-assisted sol–gel technique without any template. ZnCl 2 was used as a Zn-containing precursor, causing the oriented growth of particles. The observation of a hole on the facet of the as-synthesized particles was discussed in this work. XRD, TEM, and DRS were used to investigate the prepared powder and a simple mechanism was suggested to explain the hole formation on the surface of nanoflakes. As a result, the synthesized powder included pure ZnO with direct band gap energy of 3.24 eV. The range of particle size was within 1 µm in diameter and