Response To Comment On “1D Tellurium Nanostructures: Photothermally Assisted Morphology‐Controlled Synthesis and Applications in Preparing Functional Nanoscale Materials”

Abstract

The photoluminescence of trigonal tellurium (t-Te) nanowires has attracted increasing attention in recent years. Although roomtemperature photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy studies for nanobelts with widths of 250-280 nm (by Rao and co-workers) [1] and gray t-Te microbelts with widths ranging from hundreds of nanometers to several micrometers (by Yu and co-workers) [2] do not show emission, PL emission from Te nanostructures has already been found according to previous reports; for example, Yu and co-workers observed photoluminescence emission peaks in the blue-violet region (390-550 nm). [3,4] Similar emission features were also observed in blue t-Te nanowires/nanorods by the groups of Xi [5] and Chang. [6] Following up on the work done in this area, we reported the PL spectra of Te nanowires and Te-Pt nanochains in a quartz cell by dispersing Te-based samples in ethanol, and recording the spectra on a Fluorolog-3-Tau steady-lifetime spectrophotometer. [7] This work further suggested that tellurium (t-Te) nanostructures can give blue-violet emission.In their comment, Roy et al. claimed that the Te nanowire and Te-Pt nanochain spectra in our paper seems to originate from the solid-sample holder of the Hitachi F-4010 spectrophotometer. Based on new results and careful analysis, we conclude that the Te nanowires and Te-Pt nanochains in our work do indeed give intrinsic blue-violet emission. There is no possibility that any of the emission originated from the sample holder itself, or from any other measurement artifacts. In fact, the photoluminescence (PL) spectra of our samples were measured in a quartz cell (not solid holder) by dispersing the Te-based samples in ethanol, and all the photoluminescence spectra were taken on a Fluorolog-3-Tau steady-lifetime spectrophotometer (not a Hitachi F-4010 spectrophotometer). Since the samples were dispersed in ethanol solution and the measurement was taken in a quartz cell, the emission absolutely cannot originate from the polymer cushion used in the sample holder. In fact, the system background had already been subtracted from the photoluminescence spectra in our originally published manuscript. To demonstrate this, Figure 1 displays our complementary room-temperature photoluminescence measurement on ethanol (the gray line) and ethanol solution containing Te nanowires (the dashed-dotted line). It can be clearly seen that the profiles and intensities of ethanol solution containing Te nanowires and pure ethanol are different and the intensity of the former is much higher than that of the latter. This confirms that Te nanowires give blue-violet emission. The PL spectrum of the Te nanowires (the black line in Figure 1) can be obtained by subtracting the influence of the background effect. In the same way, we performed another complementary PL measurement and confirmed that Te-Pt nanochains could also generate blue-violet emission, as shown in Figure 2. Given that this backgroundsubtraction method is the accepted method for obtaining PL spectra, [8] we feel that the luminesce...

Te hexagonal nanotubes: formation and optical properties

“…The first report on PL property of Te nanostructure so far as we know indicates strong peaks at about 410, 433, and 452 nm [18]. After that, great interest and discussion have been given on the blue-violet PL of Te nanostructures due to their strong application back ground as optoelectric devices [19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. To the best of our knowledge, only the works by Wang et al [25] and Lin et al [26] have discussed on the origination mechanism of the PL.…”