Abstract
Titanium carbide (TiC) and niobium carbide (NbC) nanosheets were synthesized by reacting few-layer graphene (FLG) with volatile titanium and niobium iodides, respectively. The successful synthesis was confirmed by XRD, SEM, TEM, and Raman analyses. The synthesized TiC and NbC nanosheets were polycrystalline, with average crystallite sizes of 8 and 12 nm, respectively. The results suggested that FLG acted as the template to confine the reaction and defined the overall morphology of the synthesized nanosheets. This method could be extended to synthesize a variety of other carbide nanosheets.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Coleman JN, Lotya M, O’Neill A, Bergin SD, King PJ, Khan U, Young K, Gaucher A, De S, Smith RJ, Shvets IV, Arora SK, Stanton G, Kim HY, Lee K, Kim GT, Duesberg GS, Hallam T, Boland JJ, Wang JJ, Donegan JF, Grunlan JC, Moriarty G, Shmeliov A, Nicholls RJ, Perkins JM, Grieveson EM, Theuwissen K, McComb DW, Nellist PD, Nicolosi V (2011) Two-dimensional nanosheets produced by liquid exfoliation of layered materials. Science 331(6017):568–571. doi:10.1126/science.1194975
Dai HJ, Wong EW, Lu YZ, Fan SS, Lieber CM (1995) Synthesis and characterization of carbide nanorods. Nature 375(6534):769–772
Han WQ, Fan SS, Li QQ, Hu YD (1997) Synthesis of gallium nitride nanorods through a carbon nanotube-confined reaction. Science 277(5330):1287–1289
Huang X, Zhou X, Wu S, Wei Y, Qi X, Zhang J, Boey F, Zhang H (2010) Reduced graphene oxide-templated photochemical synthesis and in situ assembly of Au nanodots to orderly patterned Au nanodot chains. Small 6(4):513–516. doi:10.1002/smll.200902001
Huang X, Li S, Huang Y, Wu S, Zhou X, Li S, Gan CL, Boey F, Mirkin CA, Zhang H (2011) Synthesis of hexagonal close-packed gold nanostructures. Nat Commun 2:292. http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v2/n4/suppinfo/ncomms1291_S1.html
Huang X, Li S, Wu S, Huang Y, Boey F, Gan CL, Zhang H (2012) Graphene oxide-templated synthesis of ultrathin or tadpole-shaped au nanowires with alternating hcp and fcc domains. Adv Mater 24(7):979–983. doi:10.1002/adma.201104153
Klein MVHJ, Willians WS (1978) Raman scattering induced by carbon vacancies in TiC x . Phys Rev B 17(4):1546–1557
Lee C, Wei XD, Kysar JW, Hone J (2008) Measurement of the elastic properties and intrinsic strength of monolayer graphene. Science 321(5887):385–388. doi:10.1126/science.1157996
Lee KG, Wi R, Imran M, Park TJ, Lee J, Lee SY, Kim DH (2010) Functionalization effects of single-walled carbon nanotubes as templates for the synthesis of silica nanorods and study of growing mechanism of silica. ACS Nano 4(7):3933–3942. doi:10.1021/nn100807r
Lee JW, Hall AS, Kim JD, Mallouk TE (2012) A facile and template-free hydrothermal synthesis of Mn3O4 nanorods on graphene sheets for supercapacitor electrodes with long cycle stability. Chem Mater 24(6):1158–1164. doi:10.1021/cm203697w
Li XL, Wang XR, Zhang L, Lee SW, Dai HJ (2008) Chemically derived, ultrasmooth graphene nanoribbon semiconductors. Science 319(5867):1229–1232. doi:10.1126/science.1150878
Li C, Jiang D, Zhang L, Xia J, Li Q (2012) Controlled synthesis of ZnS quantum dots and ZnS quantum flakes with graphene as a template. Langmuir 28(25):9729–9734. doi:10.1021/la300310m
Lohse BH, Calka A, Wexler D (2005) Raman spectroscopy as a tool to study TiC formation during controlled ball milling. J Appl Phys 97(114912):1–7. doi:10.1063/1.1927282
Lu Z, Zhu J, Sim D, Zhou W, Shi W, Hng HH, Yan Q (2011) Synthesis of ultrathin silicon nanosheets by using graphene oxide as template. Chem Mater 23(24):5293–5295. doi:10.1021/cm202891p
Lv W, Tang DM, He YB, You CH, Shi ZQ, Chen XC, Chen CM, Hou PX, Liu C, Yang QH (2009) Low-temperature exfoliated graphenes: vacuum-promoted exfoliation and electrochemical energy storage. ACS Nano 3(11):3730–3736. doi:10.1021/nn900933u
Novoselov KS, Geim AK, Morozov SV, Jiang D, Zhang Y, Dubonos SV, Grigorieva IV, Firsov AA (2004) Electric field effect in atomically thin carbon films. Science 306(5696):666–669. doi:10.1126/science.1102896
Novoselov KS, Jiang D, Schedin F, Booth TJ, Khotkevich VV, Morozov SV, Geim AK (2005) Two-dimensional atomic crystals. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 102(30):10451–10453. doi:10.1073/pnas.0502848102
Park J-E, Lee Y, Lee J, Jang HS, Shin H-Y, Yoon S, Baik JM, Kim MH, Kim S-J (2012) Graphene as a highly efficient template for growing one-dimensional RuO2 nanostructures. Cryst Growth Des. doi:10.1021/cg300511c
Wong EW, Maynor BW, Burns LD, Lieber CM (1996) Growth of metal carbide nanotubes and nanorods. Chem Mater 8(8):2041–2046
Zhao G, Li J, Jiang L, Dong H, Wang X, Hu W (2012) Synthesizing MnO2 nanosheets from graphene oxide templates for high performance pseudosupercapacitors. Chem Sci 3(2):433–437
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (No. NCET-10-0595), the National Natural Science Foundation for Young Scholars of China (No. 51002105), and the Shanghai Pu Jiang Program (No. 10PJ1410100).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Chen, K., Bao, Z. Synthesis and characterization of carbide nanosheets by a template-confined reaction. J Nanopart Res 14, 1141 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-012-1141-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-012-1141-9