SYNTHESIS AND STRUCTURE DETERMINATION OF K 2 Ti 6 O 13 NANOWIRES.docVIP

SYNTHESIS AND STRUCTURE DETERMINATION OF K2Ti6O13 NANOWIRES Ruihong WANG1, Bolu WANG2, Qing CHEN2 and Lian-Mao PENG2,1 1Beijing Laboratory of Electron Microscopy, Institute of Physics, P.O. Box 603, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 10080, China 2Department of Electronics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China Nanoscale materials, such as nanotubes and nanowires, are among important advanced materials that are expected to exhibit unusually chemical and physical properties, which may be different from that of bulk materials. Among these nanoscale materials, titanate nanotubes and nanowires have many important applications in areas such as photo-catalyst, gas sensors, high energy cell and environmental purification[1-2]. Many methods have been developed to synthesize titanate whiskers[3], but typically the diameters of the products were in micron. In our previous work, titanate nanotubes and potassium titanate nanowires, both having diameter around 10nm, were synthesized using a simple one step hydrothermal reaction among TiO2 particles and alkali solution[4,5]. In this paper we report a successful synthesis of potassium titanate nanowires using hydrothermal reaction among layered Na2Ti3O7 and KOH solution. K2Ti6O13 nanowires were prepared in the following way: layer structured Na2Ti3O7 powder was added into a 10M KOH aqueous solution. The specimen was statically heated in a furnace at 200?C for 24 hours. The final white product was filtered and washed with de-ionized water at room temperature. TEM sample was prepared by dispersing the powder in alcohol by ultrasonic treatment, dropping onto a holey carbon film supported on a copper grid, and then dried in air. TEM and EDX studies were carried out using Tecnai 20, and HREM using Tecnai F30. Image simulations were performed using the Cerius2 software. Figure.1 is a low magnification TEM image showing many nanowires with diameters around 10 nm, and length around several hundreds nanometers. EDX was performed