Issue 43, 2012

In situ TPR removal: a generic method for fabricating tubular array devices with mechanical and structural soundness, and functional robustness on various substrates

Abstract

Wire array templates have been utilized for fabricating various three-dimensional tubular structure devices, such as solar cells, batteries and supercapacitors, as well as electronic and photonic devices. It is necessary to remove the templates by using post-treatments such as wet chemical etching, decomposition, or Kirkendall approaches. However, it remains a challenge to ensure tubular structure integrity, mechanical soundness, and chemical purity during the template removal process, which affects the functional robustness of enabled tubular structure array devices. In this work, by utilizing ZnO nanorod array devices as templates and temperature programmed reduction (TPR) as the removal method, nanotube array devices made of various functional oxides have been directly converted with well-retained uniformity, structure and mechanical soundness, and chemical homogeneity on both two-dimensional (2D) planar and three-dimensional (3D) monolith device substrates. The successful examples range from binary metal oxides such as fluorite CeO2 to complex oxides like perovskite La0.8Sr0.2CoO3 (LSCO). This TPR removal method is generic, simple and rationally controllable, and can be easily expanded to the preparation of other oxides and non-oxide tubular structure devices regardless of the interfaced device substrate geometry. As a demonstration, the enabled CeO2 nanotube array devices could function as good high-temperature O2 sensors and active photocatalytic devices with good robustness.

Graphical abstract: In situ TPR removal: a generic method for fabricating tubular array devices with mechanical and structural soundness, and functional robustness on various substrates

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
13 Jul 2012
Accepted
05 Sep 2012
First published
06 Sep 2012

J. Mater. Chem., 2012,22, 23098-23105

In situ TPR removal: a generic method for fabricating tubular array devices with mechanical and structural soundness, and functional robustness on various substrates

Z. Zhang, H. Gao, W. Cai, C. Liu, Y. Guo and P. Gao, J. Mater. Chem., 2012, 22, 23098 DOI: 10.1039/C2JM34606K

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