Facile synthesis of Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3−δ (BSCF) perovskite nanowires by templating from nanoporous anodic aluminium oxide membranes

Abstract

Template synthesis has been shown to be a popular and elegant route for fabricating a broad range of nanostructured materials such as nanowires, nanotubes or nanorods. These nanostructures can be used as building blocks in nanoscale electronic, magnetic and photonic devices. Nonetheless, there are still numerous challenges to control the intricate one-dimensional nanostructures with well-controlled size, phase purity, crystallinity and chemical composition. In this work, we synthesized Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3−δ (BSCF) perovskite nanowires by templating approach for the first time; with varying the spin coating rate of 100, 500 and 1000 revolutions per minute (rpm), followed by drying (150 °C, 15 h) and calcination treatment (400–900 °C, 4 h). We only focused on structural properties, morphology and formation mechanism of BSCF nanowires by means of X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis. The XRD profile confirmed at a calcination temperature of 900 °C, a single crystalline phase of BSCF nanowires was successfully obtained, in which congruent to the perovskite cubic structure of BSCF. Particularly, FESEM micrograph showed that a highly dense morphological distribution of BSCF nanowires has been successfully attained at a low spinning rate of 100 rpm, with the length range of 7–10 μm. The TEM image further confirmed the nanowires structure of BSCF. Besides, EDX analysis confirmed the stoichiometry percentages of Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3−δ. The possible formation mechanism of the BSCF nanowires was also discussed in this paper.