Ultrathin Nanowires—A Materials Chemistry Perspective

Abstract

The recent years have seen an explosive interest in one‐dimensional nanostructures1, as testified by the number of citations this field has accrued; as customary, its blossoming was enabled by chemical breakthroughs that allowed the reproducible and affordable synthesis of such structures.2, 3 The limitations of those syntheses was in the diameter of the nanowires that it could produce (hardly < 10 nm), and in the use of expensive and low‐yield techniques, such as chemical vapor deposition (CVD). This paper attempts to summarize the very recent chemical breakthroughs that have allowed the production of ultrathin nanowires, often in solution, and often in gram‐scale quantities. By no means is this a comprehensive coverage of the field, which can in part be found in other excellent reviews1, 2, 4–6 but a selection of those contributions that we feel would most help put this emerging field in perspective. We will review the various synthetic strategies, their pros and cons, and we will give our best guesses as to the future directions of the field and what we can expect from it.

Local structure study of vanadium pentoxide 1D-nanostructures

“…In the last decades, one-dimensional (1D) nanostructured materials, such as nanowires, nanoribbons, and nanotubes have attracted the interest of many researchers due to their improved properties when compared to similar isotropic structures Cademartiri and Ozin 2009;Barth et al 2010). Among these materials, 1D vanadium pentoxide is an example of a compound which possesses great potential for different applications, such as in photocatalysis , sensors (Leroy et al 2007;Liu et al 2005Liu et al , 2006Serier et al 2006), electrochemical ) and optical devices (Yan et al 2009).…”

Anomalous oriented attachment growth behavior on SnO2 nanocrystals

“…Although a highly anisotropic growth behavior was also reported for metallic and semiconductor systems, 12 a comprehensive description for the OA mechanism in such cases was not achieved. Our findings indicate that the observed growth behavior can be related to the excess energy from the nanocrystal assembly's edges and kinks, 13 which may have a significant contribution during the OA growth mechanism steps.…”

Ultrathin platinum nanowires grown on single-layered nickel hydroxide with high hydrogen evolution activity

“…Unlike previous reports involving utilization of Pt electrodes 8,[19][20][21][22] , the selection of single-layered 2D Ni(OH) 2 (SL-Ni(OH) 2 ) nanosheets as the substrates is based on cost considerations 28,29 , as SL-Ni(OH) 2 sheets might be cheaply acquired via exfoliation of lamellar a-Ni(OH) 2 (refs 30-33). Furthermore, compared with commonly used zero-dimensional (0D) Pt nanoparticles (NPs), 1D ultrathin Pt NWs of high aspect ratios, few lattice boundaries and smooth crystal planes offer the opportunity for improvement of the catalytic activity [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] . Meanwhile, a large contact area between Pt NWs and the Ni(OH) 2 substrates can effectively alleviate possible migration and aggregation of Pt NWs and thus benefit enhancement of the catalytic stability 40 .…”