A simple and low-cost soft route has been developed to the direct large-scale production of highly oriented ZnO nanowire arrays at 60 °C. It has been found that the growth of well-aligned ZnO nanowire arrays is dependent on several parameters, such as the reaction time and the concentration of ammonium ions. The environmentally benign ZnO nanowires obtained, with significant photoluminescence property and interesting photocatalytic activity, are single crystals and have a low defect concentration, which could be expected to find promising potential for optoelectronic and environmental application.

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Large gold nanosheets and small gold polyhedra have been successfully synthesized in room-temperature ionic liquids (ILs) by an ionothermal reduction of HAuCl 4 under N 2 atmosphere, without using any additives. The effect of the organic cation on the final morphologies of the gold particles has been studied, and a series of pyrrolidinium-, imidazolium-, and quaternary amine-based ionic liquids have been investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements. Our results show that these ILs favor the anisotropic growth of gold by acting as template agents and that only gold microspheres can be obtained with the IL containing a reductive functionality.

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