Abstract
Zirconia precursor nanowires were synthesized via the solvothermal reaction of zirconium tetra- n-propoxide Zr(OPr n ) 4 with ethylene glycol and 1-butyl-3-methyl imidazolium tetrafluoroborate ionic liquid at 160 °C. The as-synthesized nanowires were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric and differential scanning calorimetric (TG-DSC) analysis, and infrared spectroscopy (IR), etc. The length of the as-synthesized nanowires reaches ∼20 μm, and the width ∼50 nm, giving an aspect ratio of a few hundreds. Upon calcination at elevated temperatures, the zirconia precursor nanowires transform from relative dense structure into highly porous ZrO 2 nanowires consisting of interconnected nanocrystallites; in addition the length of the nanowires is greatly reduced. Cyclic voltammetry measurement shows that the modification of the graphite electrode with the ZrO 2 nanowires greatly enhances sensitivity of the detection of vanadium, suggesting that ZrO 2 nanowires may find important applications in vanadium(V) determination using electroanalytical methods with chemically modified electrode technique.
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