Zinc oxide is an important semiconducting and piezoelectric material. Structurally, due to the three types of fast growth direction: <0001>, <011 0> and <21 1 0> as well as the ±(0001) polar surfaces, a diversity group of ZnO nanostructures have been grown in our laboratory: including nanocombs, nanosaws, nanosprings, nanorings, nanobows and nanopropellers. This article reviews our recent progr...

Ag nanostructures with surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) activities have been fabricated by applying laser-direct writing (LDW) technique on silver oxide (AgOx) thin films. By controlling the laser powers, multi-level Raman imaging of organic molecules adsorbed on the nanostructures has been observed. This phenomenon is further investigated by atomic-force microscopy and electromagnetic ...

Ga(III), In(III) and Tl(III) ions in the presence of different sulfate salts have been successfully separated using 1-(3,4-dihydroxybenzaldehyde)-2-acetylpyridiniumchloride hydrazone (DAPCH) loaded on Duolite C20 in batch and column modes. The obtained modified resin as well as the metal complexes was characterized by elemental analysis and infrared spectra. The extraction isotherms were determ...

In vivo incorporation of a series organometallic photoluminescent complexes in Phaeodactylum tricornutum diatom shells (frustules) is investigated as biotechnological route to luminescent biosilica nanostructures. [Ir(ppy)2bpy]+[PF6]−, [(2,2′-bipyridine)bis(2-phenylpyridinato)iridium(III) hexafluorophosphate], [Ru(bpy)3]2+ 2[PF6]−, [tris(2,2′-bipyridine)ruthenium(II) AlQ3 (tris-(8-hydroxyquinol...

Semiconductor nanostructures are potential building blocks for many applications in photonics, electronics, physics, and life sciences. They are also a good candidate to study quantum mechanics and related novel phenomena, based on the dimensionality and the size reduction. Among various nanostructures, one-dimensional (1-D) III-V nanostructures grown on Si substrates have received a lot of att...

Oxidation of solid metal nanoobjects is a versatile approach to generating hollow metal oxide nanostructures. The mechanism for the solid-to-hollow conversions has been attributed to the Kirkendall effect, which describes an unbalanced interdiffusion of a thermal diffusion couple. When a metal nanoobject is exposed to oxygen at elevated temperatures, the outward diffusion of the metal cations i...

Over the last few decades, benefitting from the sufficient sensitivity, high specificity, nondestructive, and rapid detection capability of the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) technique, numerous nanostructures have been elaborately designed and successfully synthesized as high-performance SERS substrates, which have been extensively exploited for the identification of chemical and bio...

Up to now, researchers have proposed several synthesis methods for the preparation of β-nickel(II) hydroxide nanostructures. Most of these approaches contain harsh synthetic conditions such as multi-step processes, high temperatures and long reaction time. In this work, a novel, facile and low cost method is introduced to produce of β-Ni(OH)2 nanostructures using the gas-solution precipitation ...