Aqueous preparation of surfactant-free copper selenide nanowires

Robust scalable synthesis of surfactant-free thermoelectric metal chalcogenide nanostructures

“…The experimental design is based on the low water solubility of metal chalcogenides (Table S1 in the Supporting Information, as indicated by "S" before the figure or table number) and the low cost of the wet-chemistry method. [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] A typical synthesis is exemplified by cuprous selenide nanoparticles, as shown in Figure 1, 3.16 g (40 mmol) Se powder was reduced by NaBH4 in 400 ml H2O under magnetic stirring with the protection of inert gas to form a colorless solution. 13.6 g (80 mmol) CuCl2•2H2O was completely dissolved in distilled water and added into the selenium precursor solution to immediately generate a black precipitate.…”

“…[21][22] Alternatively, nanostructured metal chalcogenides can be prepared by wet chemical methods. [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] With novel hydrothermal and solvothermal approaches, various metal chalcogenides with a good control of the size, shape distributions, and crystallinity, could be obtained; such as Sb2X3 nanobelts (X=S, Se, Te), [24] dendrite like Cu2-xSe [25] etc. With a so-called mixed solvothermal method, which is effective to form unique nanostructures within a mixed solvent under mild conditions, a variety of metal chalcogenides with different morphologies could be obtained.…”

“…The reason we choose wet chemical method is due to its low cost and controllability of product properties. [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] The resultant nanopowders are consolidated into pellets through the spark plasma sintering (SPS) technique for investigation of their thermoelectric performance.…”

Effects of nanostructure on clean energy: big solutions gained from small features

“…Han et al [2] summarized the recent progress on different kinds of thermoelectric materials in their comprehensive review and pointed out that nanostructuring was the most important strategy for enhancing ZT values, not only because nanostructuring could effectively decrease thermal conductivity, but also because it could cause an energy filtering effect that increases the Seebeck coefficient. Later, they proposed a low-cost surfactant-free route to the synthesis of different nanostructured thermoelectric materials, and obvious enhancement of ZT was achieved [57][58][59][60]. In particular, the pronounced enhancement in ZT of some metal chalcogenide nanostructures was achieved due to the presence of nanograins or nanopores, which can effectively decrease the thermal conductivity [57].…”

Fully Solution‐Processed Conductive Films Based on Colloidal Copper Selenide Nanosheets for Flexible Electronics

“…Among them, copper selenide represents one of the most interesting materials since it is a superionic conductor that shows p-type conductivity due to copper vacancies within its crystal lattice. [ 8b , 12 ] Copper selenide can be prepared in a variety of stoichiometric and nonstoichiometric crystal phases, such as cubic berzelianite (Cu 2 Se or Cu 7.16 Se 4 ), hexagonal klockmannite (CuSe or Cu 0.87 Se), tetragonal umangite (Cu 3 Se 2 ), and orthorhombic athabascaite (Cu 5 Se 4 or CuSe); as well as in different morphologies like spherical nanoparticles, [ 12,13 ] nanocubes, [ 14 ] nanorods, [ 15 ] nanowires, [ 16 ] and hierarchical nanostructures. [ 17 ] Furthermore, a few examples of 2D copper selenide in the form of nanoplates and nanosheets (NSs) have recently been reported.…”