Spontaneous growth of superstructure alpha-Fe2O3 nanowire and nanobelt arrays in reactive oxygen plasma.

One-dimensional a-Fe2O3 is a promising nanomaterial for advanced applications in catalysis and water splitting, environmental protection, sensors, dye solar cells, magnetic storage media, bioprocessing, and controlled drug delivery and detection, especially as carriers of antigens for prion detection and PCR manipulation. a-Fe2O3 nanowires have been successfully synthesized by various methods based on templates, hydrothermal conditions, sol–gel-mediated reactions, solvothermal conditions, gas decomposition, direct thermal oxidation (in a gas atmosphere of CO2, SO2, O2, and NO2), [7] chemical vapor deposition (CVD), and plasmaenhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). The methods based on direct thermal oxidation, gas decomposition, and CVD reported to date require long synthesis times and high temperatures and therefore limit the efficiency of oxide nanowire synthesis. The application and commercialization of nanowires or nanobelts requires simple synthetic methods that can be scaled for both large areas and large quantities. Recently, we discovered a new universal method for the synthesis of transition metal oxide nanowires and nanobelts by direct plasma oxidation of bulk materials. It has been successfully applied for the rapid synthesis of high-density niobium oxide nanowires. In this process, there is no