Sonochemical Synthesis of Trigonal Selenium Nanowires

Abstract

This paper describes a solution-based method for the large-scale synthesis of selenium nanowires. Sonication was used as the driving force for both nucleation and dispersion. The trigonal Se seeds were formed during sonication and grew over the course of hours at the expense of the amorphous Se colloids in a process similar to Ostwald ripening. The resultant nanowires were typically single crystals of trigonal Se whose morphologies could be tuned by adjusting the reaction conditions. A variety of solvents are demonstrated for use with this process. We also demonstrate patterned growth of these nanowires on substrates to form extensive 2D networks and isolated clusters. The morphologies of the products were examined with a combination of microscopic and spectroscopic techniques.

Synthesis and characterisation of selenium nanowires using template synthesis

“…In our case Se shows trigonal structure, but not as strong as reported by some other groups [15,[17][18][19]. Zhang et al [18,19] reported that room temperature electrodeposited samples were annealed at 180 C for 1 h to obtain single trigonal structure.…”

“…Different methods have also been adopted to synthesise selenium nanowires like sono-chemical synthesis [15], silver-induced growth in aqueous solution [16], hydrothermal method [17], electrodeposition [18,19], physical adsorption through vapour phase diffusion [11], reverse micelles [20], etc. In this article we report the growth of selenium nanowires using electrodeposition in the pores of anodic alumina membrane as template.…”

Preparation of monodisperse Se colloid spheres and Se nanowires using Na2SeSO3 as precursor

“…It can be seen that the t-Se products are nanowires with a mean diameter of 300 nm ± 30 nm and length of up to several micrometers, and no Se spheres are observed. In this conversion process, when the a-Se spheres were dispersed in ethanol, the a-Se gradually dissolved to form a metastable solution, and then the selenium atoms recrystallized on the t-Se seeds which were produced in the hot ethanol solvent because of the low solubility of the t-Se in ethanol [9]. At this time, the anisotropic characteristic of the t-Se provided a natural template to guide the growth of Se atoms along one particular axis, and thus the products turned out to be nanowires [27,33,34].…”

Sonochemical synthesis of nanomaterials

“…11). 43 Nanocrystals of trigonal Se were nucleated sonochemically and acted as seeds for the growth of Se nanowires through a solid-solution-solid transformation mechanism driven thermodynamically: amorphous Se has a higher free energy than trigonal Se. Various metal oxides and metal chalcogenides have also been prepared by sonochemical methods with nonvolatiles.…”