Controllable Hydrothermal Synthesis of Cd<sub>2</sub>Ge<sub>2</sub>O<sub>6</sub> Nanostructures

Abstract

Various Cd 2 Ge 2 O 6 nanostructures, including nanorods, nanoparticles, nanowires and erythrocyte/ flower/disc-like superstructures have been successfully prepared by hydrothermal methods, which are simply tuned by changing the reaction temperature, surfactants, and the molar ratio of Cd and Ge precursors in aqueous solution. These morphologies can be simply controlled by only selecting the reactants and controlling experimental conditions with excellent reproducibility. These studies about the Cd 2 Ge 2 O 6 nanostructures reveal that temperature is a crucial parameter to tune the morphologies from nanoparticles to nanorods. By adding various surfactants, different nanostructures such as flower/disc-like nanosticks could be obtained. Replacing Cd(CH 3 COO) 2 • 2H 2 O with CdO as the precusor results in the formation of ultralong nanowires with CTAB as surfactant. Molar ratio of GeO 2 to CdO was demonstrated as an important factor to influence the surface smoothness of nanowires. It is believed that the simple hydrothermal route may be the useful route to synthesize variable germanate nanostructures for various applications.