THE MORPHOLOGY FEATURES OF NANOSTRUCTURE OF ZIRCONIUM, MOLYBDENUM AND WOLFRAM OXIDES SYNTHESISED BY LASER ABLATION OF METALS IN WATER

Abstract

The paper gives the investigation results of composition and morphology of oxide nanostructures of transition metals – zirconium, molybdenum and wolfram synthesized by laser ablation pure metals in water. High temperatures and pressures in zone of interaction of the pulse laser beam with the surface of metal in water contribute to the intensive synthesis of oxides in the form of clusters of particles with size about 1−2 nanometres. This is characteristic for metals with high ionization potential. As it follows from the data of X-ray diffraction analysis and scanning electron microscopy, specifically, the clusters are amorphous building material for nanostructures of the oxides of the metals enumerated above. The paper demonstrates the general pattern of their structure, namely, the stratification of the material from which the foam formations, thin-walled hollow round particles, plates, filaments, and other forms of nanostructures are composed. The research of morphological features of the nanostructures of zirconium, molybdenum and wolfram oxides obtained by the authors indicates that their use as substrates will achieve high gain values of Raman scattering ~ 10 4 −10 8 . In this range, there are the gain data previously obtained by the authors in the experiments on the synthesis of zirconium nano-oxides when using them as a substrate. This indicates that the nanostructures of molybdenum and wolfram nano-oxides also can serve as the effective substrates and can be used as a sensor in the high sensitive composition of substances analyzers based on surface enhanced Raman scattering.