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Morphology and property tuning of Te nanostructures in a hydrothermal growth

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Abstract

Te nanoplates, nanowires, and nanospheres were successfully synthesized by a hydrothermal method with glucose as a surfactant agent. By simply changing the reaction time, the morphology of Te nanostructures can be changed from nanoplates, to nanowires, and ultimately to nanospheres. The samples were studied by x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, x-ray photoemission spectroscopy, and photoluminescence measurements. It is found that the reaction time plays an important role in morphology formation and optical properties of Te nanostructures. A possible growth mechanism involving a self-assembly process and Wulff facets theorem is proposed to explain the formation of Te nanoplates, nanowires, and nanospheres. This study presents a simple way to control the morphology of Te nanostructures and their optical properties.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province (No. 1908065ME149), China and Anhui Provincial Education Department's Outstanding Talents Cultivation Project in College and University (No. gxyq2019074).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Electrical and Photoelectronic Engineering, West Anhui University, Lu’an, 237012, Anhui, China

    Ping Yu, Li Zhou, Zhengfu Jia & Keyue Wu

  2. Department of Physics, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, 76203, USA

    Jingbiao Cui

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  1. Ping Yu
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  2. Li Zhou
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  3. Zhengfu Jia
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Correspondence to Keyue Wu.

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Yu, P., Zhou, L., Jia, Z. et al. Morphology and property tuning of Te nanostructures in a hydrothermal growth. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 31, 16332–16337 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-020-04182-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-020-04182-0

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