Synthesis and Characterization of High-Purity Bismuth Nanowires via Seed-Assisted Growth Approach

Abstract

Nanowires are considered as high-performance thermoelectric materials with large Seebeck coefficients due to quantum confinement and low thermal conductivity because of enhanced boundary scattering of phonons. In this work, a seed-assisted growth method has been developed to synthesize high-purity bismuth nanowires. The bismuth seeds were first synthesized by reducing BiCl3 in the ice water with NaBH4. The high-purity bismuth nanowires about 40–50 nm in diameter and several tens of micrometers in length were then grown on bismuth seeds by reducing NaBiO3 with ethylene glycol. X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy were employed to characterize the crystal structure, microstructure, and growth direction of the bismuth seeds and nanowires. The effects of temperature, reductant, and bismuth seeds template on the microstructures of the bismuth nanowires were also investigated. The synthesis conditions of bismuth seeds and nanowires were optimized. The selected area electron diffraction pattern confirms that the growth direction of bismuth nanowires is parallel to [\( 11\bar{2}0\)] direction. It was discovered that high-purity bismuth nanowires with high aspect ratio can be synthesized by precisely controlling the temperature to adjust the nucleation rate of the bismuth nuclei, selecting the appropriate reductant to maintain a low nucleation rate, and using bismuth seeds as the template of the epitaxial growth of the bismuth nuclei.