Design of experiments using the Taguchi approach: Synthesis of ZnO nanoparticles

The Taguchi method, a robust experimental design, was used for optimization of synthesis of a ZnO nanoparticle. The Taguchi method was applied for the experimental and standard 9 orthogonal arrays (OA) with four factors and three levels for each factor. In the synthesis of the ZnO nanoparticle, zinc acetate, reaction temperature, reaction time and monomer ratio (AA/AAm) were used as important factors. After analyzing with analysis of variance (ANOVA) results showed that minimum particle size for optimizing final product was found to be 30 nm. Synthesized ZnO nanoparticles were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques.