New Type of Nanowires, Built with Natural Gas Heating

From top left are Prof. Soojin Park, Dr. Sinho Choi, Researcher Jieun Kim (KRICT) and from bottom left are Prof. Sang Kyu Kwak and Researcher Dae Yeon Hwang. | Contents by: Sinho Choi, Design by: Dukgi Lee Copyright : UNIST

A team of Korean researchers, affiliated with Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has recently pioneered in developing a new simple nanowire manufacturing technique that uses self-catalytic growth process assisted by thermal decomposition of natural gas. A

ccording to the research team, this method is simple, reproducible, size-controllable, and cost-effective in that lithium-ion batteries could also benefit from it.

In their approach, they discovered that germanium nanowires are grown by the reduction of germanium oxide particles and subsequent self-catalytic growth during the thermal decomposition of natural gas, and simultaneously, carbon sheath layers are uniformly coated on the nanowire surface.

This study is a collaboration among scientists, including Prof. SooJin Park (School of Energy and Chemical Engineering) and Prof. Sang Kyu Kwak (School of Energy and Chemical Engineering), Dr. Sinho Choi (UNIST), Combined M.S./Ph.D. Student Dae Yeon Hwang (UNIST), and Researcher Jieun Kim (Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology).

In a study, reported in the January 21, 2016 issue of Nano Letters, the team demonstrated a new redox-responsive assembly method to synthesize hierarchically structured carbon-sheathed germanium nanowires (c-GeNWs) on a large scale by the use of self-catalytic growth process assisted by thermally decomposed natural gas.

According to the team, this simple synthetic process not only enables them to synthesize hierachially assembled materials from inexpensive metal oxides at a larger scale, but also can likely be extended to other metal oxides as well. Moreover, the resulting hierarchically assembled nanowires (C-GeNWs) show enhanced chemical and thermal stability, as well as outstanding electrochemical properties.

The team states, “This strategy may open up an effective way to make other metallic/semiconducting nanomaterials via one-step synthetic reactions through an environmentally benign and cost-effective approach.”

This work was supported by the Basic Science Research Program and Mid-Career Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grand, funded by the Korean government (MSIP).

Journal Reference:
Sinho Choi, Jieun Kim, Dae Yeon Hwang, Hyungmin Park, Jaegeon Ryu, Sang Kyu Kwak* and Soojin Park* “Generalized redox-responsive assembly of carbon-sheathed metallic and semiconducting nanowire heterostructures”. Nano Lett. (2016)

Associated links
Original article from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology

Journal information

Nano Letters

Funding information

Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (2015-01003143).

Media Contact

UNIST Public Relations Team Research SEA

More Information:

http://www.researchsea.com

All latest news from the category: Materials Sciences

Materials management deals with the research, development, manufacturing and processing of raw and industrial materials. Key aspects here are biological and medical issues, which play an increasingly important role in this field.

innovations-report offers in-depth articles related to the development and application of materials and the structure and properties of new materials.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

New yttrium-hydrogen compounds discovered

Researchers at the University of Bayreuth have made a significant scientific breakthrough by discovering new yttrium-hydrogen compounds having serious implications for the research on high-pressure superconductivity. High-pressure superconductivity refers to…

New AI model detects ninety percent of lymphatic cancer cases

Medical image analysis using AI has developed rapidly in recent years. Now, one of the largest studies to date has been carried out using AI-assisted image analysis of lymphoma, cancer…

UTA preps giant particle detectors for neutrino project

Excavation of caverns part of Fermilab’s Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. With excavation work complete at the site where four gigantic particle detectors for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) will be…

Partners & Sponsors