Silver-induced growth of selenium nanowires in aqueous solution

A new synthesis method, induced by silver nanoparticles, has been developed for generating trigonal-selenium (t-Se) nanowires in aqueous solution at room temperature (RT). By this method, single-crystalline t-Se nanowires capped tips were successfully synthesized with uniform diameter of ∼ 23 nm and length over hundreds of nanometers. This method exhibits some advantages in fabricating t-Se nanostructures, including no need to use stabilizers and sonichemical process, avoidance of toxic reducing agents (e.g. NaBH₄, N₂H₄), and all operations being proceeded in aqueous media and at RT; particularly it can successfully achieve the transformation from amorphous α-Se to crystalline t-Se in aqueous solution. The as-synthesized nanowires display highly crystalline quality and high aspect ratios. They would be potentially applied in photoconductors, anisotropic thermo-conductors, and nonlinear optical responses. This method would be useful for generating one-dimensional nanostructures with similar lattice parameter(s).