Laser-induced solution synthesis and deposition: A generic method to make metal chalcogenide nanotubes at high rate with high consistency

Abstract

This article reports a new processing method for manufacturing nanotubes and possibly other nano entities with consistency at high rate. We show that this method can be applied for a wide range of materials, as demonstrated by a variety of metal chalcogenides. The proposed novel laser-induced solution synthesis and deposition method is a quantum jump for improving the consistency and manufacturing rate of chemical bath deposition and electroless deposition. We demonstrate the generic nature of this method by synthesizing nanocrystals of a number of arbitrarily selected metal chalcogenides, that is, tin oxide, iron oxide, manganese oxide and zinc sulfide, and depositing each of them in an ion-track polymer membrane for making uniform nanotubes. The mechanism of the tube formation is discussed. High consistency, fast growth rate, scalability and the ability of laser patterning are observed. Moreover, high-resolution transmission electron microcopy images indicate that the nanotubes made by this method, as demonstrated in SnO2, are coalesced by monodisperse ultrafine nanoparticles.