A sandwich structured Bi2Te3-nanoplates/graphene-nanosheet (Bi2Te3/G) hybrid has been synthesized by a facile in situ solvothermal route and has been investigated as a potential anode material for Li-ion batteries. Bi2Te3 grows during the solvothermal process with the simultaneous reduction of graphite oxide into graphene. The in situ formation process of the hybrid has been investigated by X-r...

A W-containing inorganic-organic nanohybrid with a plate-like morphology has been successfully prepared through a nonaqueous synthetic route using WCl(6) as the tungsten source and benzyl alcohol as the solvent. The as-prepared hybrid nanomaterial was used directly as an efficient precursor for the formation of WO(3) nanoplates via a simple thermal treatment process. The as-obtained WO(3) mater...

Olivine-structured LiMnPO(4) with 3D foldaway-lantern-like hierarchical structures have been prepared via a one-step, template-free, solvothermal approach in ethylene glycol. The foldaway-lantern-like LiMnPO(4) microstructures are composed of numerous nanoplates with thickness of about 20 nm. A series of electron microscopy characterization results indicate that the obtained primary LiMnPO(4) n...

Layer-structured two-dimensional nanomaterials are a family of materials with strong covalent bonding within layers and weak van der Waals interaction between layers, whose vertical thickness can be thinned down to few nanometer and even single atomic layer. Bismuth chalcogenides are examples of such two-dimensional materials. Here, we present our discovery of significant enhancement of light t...

It is demonstrated that bimetallic silver-gold anisotropic nanostructures can be easily assembled from various nanoparticle building blocks with well-defined geometries by means of electrostatic interactions. One-dimensional (1D) silver nanowires, two-dimensional (2D) silver nanoplates, and spherical gold nanoparticles are used as representative building blocks for bottom-up assembly. The gold ...

In order to overcome the serious deficiencies of the traditional aqueous centrifugation method in on-demand purification of metal nanoparticles, we have theoretically and experimentally developed a simple purification method based on the nanoparticles' surface area discrepancy, which can separate particles with the same mass but different shapes. As an example, we apply this method to obtain on...

TiO2 nanostructures, including nanowires, highly ordered nanotube arrays, and single crystalline nanoplates, were obtained from electrochemically anodized Ti foil in a fluorine-containing ethylene glycol electrolyte. The TiO2 nanowires, formed by the electric field induced chemical splitting of TiO2 nanotubes by fluoride ions during a lengthy anodization can be isolated from the nanotube arrays...

The study on the shape evolution of metal nanoparticles (MNPs) is crucial to gain an understanding on controlling the shape and size of metal nanostructures. In this work, a detailed study on shape evolution of silver (Ag) nanospheres to nanoplates induced by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) was performed. According to the growth mechanism of Ag nanoplates, the spectrophotometric method combined with c...

We report for the first time a simple low-cost electrochemical route to synthesis of diameter-controlled hierarchical flowerlike gold microstructures with "clean" surfaces using gold nanoplates or nanopricks as building blocks without introducing any template or surfactant.