Gluconate controls one-dimensional growth of tellurium nanostructures
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In this paper, we show for the first time that by using sodium gluconate-assisted solution route, fine, uniform, and single-crystalline tellurium nanorods and nanowires can be synthesized. Sodium gluconate is a green and safe chemical with strong chelating function, and this property may be useful in the fabrication of nanomaterials, especially one-dimensional (1D) nanomaterials. The sodium gluconate acts as both reducing agent and morphology-directing agent and by adjusting the experimental parameters, the lengths and the diameters of the tellurium nanorods could be further controlled in a certain range. This method is a simple and economical route for 1D nanostructure fabrication and might bring about a novel concept for the synthesis of 1D nanostructures with bio-ligand, sodium gluconate.
I. INTRODUCTION
Sodium gluconate is a non-corrosive, non-toxic, and readily biodegradable biomolecule produced by fermentation of glucose. It has been widely applied in medical treatment, food processing, and various materials improvement industries, which indicates the green and safe nature of sodium gluconate. One of the special properties of sodium gluconate is its strong chelating function,1 which might make it useful in nanomaterial fabrications, especially one-dimensional (1D) nanomaterial fabrications; however, so far it has not been used for the synthesis of nanomaterials to the best of our knowledge. There is an increasing awareness of environmental protection at present, and green chemistry is becoming a final goal of developing new synthesis techniques using safe substances. Driven by the above considerations, we propose to exploit the use of sodium gluconate to control the 1D-preferred growth of tellurium. As building blocks of nanodevices, 1D nanostructures have compelled more and more scientists to pursue direct and facile methods to achieve synthesis with high yield.2–8 Since the properties of 1D nanomaterials are strongly size and shape sensitive, the controlled growth of uniform nanorods and nanowires thus becomes a key step to the fabrication of nanodevices.9 Elemental tellurium has wide applications in various thermoelectronics, photoconductors, and piezoelectronic devices, and there is a great deal of interest in
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Address all correspondence to this author. e-mail: [email protected] DOI: 10.1557/JMR.2006.0064 J. Mater. Res., Vol. 21, No. 2, Feb 2006
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developing simple methods for the synthesis of tellurium nanorods and nanowires.10–13 Although there is a tendency toward 1D growth of tellurium because of its unique helical chain conformation in crystal structure,14,15 this does not mean that tellurium nanowires could form no matter what synthetic methods or what experimental conditions are used. The formation of 1D tellurium nanostructures needs appropriate reaction rate or effective limiting agent. Some research groups have reported the synthesis of tellurium nanorods and nanowires by hydrazine-reducing route,10 Na2SO3-reducing(NH4)2TeS4 approach w
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