ORIGINAL ARTICLE Facile synthesis of vanadium oxide nanowires Jesse Kysar 1 • Praveen Kumar Sekhar 1 Received: 5 June 2015 / Accepted: 17 October 2015 / Published online: 30 October 2015 Ó The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract A simple growth process is reported for the synthesis of vanadium (II) oxide nanowires with an average width of 65 nm and up to 5 lm in length for growth at 1000 °C for 3 h. The vanadium (II) oxide nanowires were grown on a gold-coated silicon substrate at ambient pres- sure using a single heat zone furnace with Ar as the carrier gas. Gold was utilized as a catalyst for the growth of the nanowires. The growth temperature and heating time were varied to observe the nanowire morphology. An increase in nanowire width was observed with an increase in the heating temperature. A ninefold increase in the number density of the nanowires was observed when the heating time was changed from 30 min to 3 h. This is the first time a simple growth process for producing VO nanowires at ambient pressure has been demonstrated. Such a scheme enables wider use of VO nanowires in critical applications such as energy storage, gas sensors, and optical devices. Keywords Nanowires Á Vanadium oxide Á Catalyst Á Thermal evaporation Introduction Vanadium oxide has been applied in catalytic and elec- trochemical fields due to their outstanding structural flex- ibility combined with unique chemical and physical properties (Mai et al. 2011; Liu et al. 2005; Zhou et al. 2012; Fu et al. 2012; Dhawan et al. 2014). As an interca- lation compound, vanadium oxides have attracted a lot of attention as an electrode material for electrochemical pseudocapacitor applications. In particular, nanomaterials of vanadium oxide (s) have been preferred due to high surface area to volume ratio and intriguing physical and electrical properties. Recent investigations point to the growing popularity of the nanowire morphology of vana- dium oxide(s) (Hong et al. 2011; Perera et al. 2013). A variety of synthesis methods has been reported for the growth of vanadium oxide nanowires (Wang and Cao 2006). The methods include sputtering, thermal evapora- tion, physical vapor deposition, hydrothermal synthesis, electrospinning, and oxide-assisted growth mechanism. Li et al. (2013) has demonstrated reactive dc magnetron sputtering as a viable technique for preparing deposits of VO 2 nanorods and nanowires. According to the investiga- tors, the nanowire formation was promoted by high sub- strate temperature, sufficient film thickness, proper inlet of the reactive gas, dispersed gold seeds, and pronounced substrate roughness. A novel stepwise hydrothermal methodology was developed by Horrocks et al. (2014) for preparing phase-pure VO 2 nanowires based on the initial oxalic acid reduction of V 2 O 5 powders to V 3 O 7 Á Further, Mai et al. (2010) reported ultra-long hierarchical vanadium oxide nanowires with diameter of 100–200 nm and length up to several millimeters. The nanowires were synthesized using the low-cost starting materials by electrospinning combined with annealing. Single crystalline VO 2 & Praveen Kumar Sekhar [email protected]Jesse Kysar [email protected]1 School of Engineering and Computer Science, Washington State University Vancouver, 14204 NE Salmon Creek Avenue, Vancouver, WA 98686, USA 123 Appl Nanosci (2016) 6:959–964 DOI 10.1007/s13204-015-0508-5
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Facile synthesis of vanadium oxide nanowires
Jesse Kysar1 • Praveen Kumar Sekhar1
Received: 5 June 2015 / Accepted: 17 October 2015 / Published online: 30 October 2015
� The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract A simple growth process is reported for the
synthesis of vanadium (II) oxide nanowires with an average
width of 65 nm and up to 5 lm in length for growth at
1000 �C for 3 h. The vanadium (II) oxide nanowires were
grown on a gold-coated silicon substrate at ambient pres-
sure using a single heat zone furnace with Ar as the carrier
gas. Gold was utilized as a catalyst for the growth of the
nanowires. The growth temperature and heating time were
varied to observe the nanowire morphology. An increase in
nanowire width was observed with an increase in the
heating temperature. A ninefold increase in the number
density of the nanowires was observed when the heating
time was changed from 30 min to 3 h. This is the first time
a simple growth process for producing VO nanowires at
ambient pressure has been demonstrated. Such a
scheme enables wider use of VO nanowires in critical
applications such as energy storage, gas sensors, and