Issue 13, 2013
From the journal:

Nanoscale

Rapid, conformal gas-phase formation of silica (SiO2) nanotubes from water condensates†

Changdeuck Bae,b   Hyunchul Kim,a   Yunjeong Yang,a   Hyunjun Yoo,a   Josep M. Montero Moreno,b   Julien Bachmann,c   Kornelius Nielschb  and  Hyunjung Shin*a  

* Corresponding authors

a Department of Energy Science, Sungkyunkwan University, 440-746 Suwon, South Korea
E-mail: hshin@skku.edu
Fax: +82-31-299-4279
Tel: +82-31-299-6278

b Institute of Applied Physics, University of Hamburg, Jungiusstrasse 11, 20355 Hamburg, Germany

c Lehrstuhl für Anorganische und Allgemeine Chemie, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Egerlandstraße 1, 91058 Erlangen, Germany

Abstract

An innovative atomic layer deposition (ALD) concept, with which nanostructures of water condensates with high aspect ratio at equilibrium in cylindrical nanopores can be transformed uniformly into silica (SiO2) at near room temperature and ambient pressure, has been demonstrated for the first time. As a challenging model system, we first prove the conversion of cylindrical water condensates in porous alumina membranes to silica nanotubes (NTs) by introducing SiCl4 as a metal reactant without involving any catalytic reaction. Surprisingly, the water NTs reproducibly transformed into silica NTs, where the wall thickness of the silica NTs deposited per cycle was found to be limited by the amount of condensed water, and it was on the orders of ten nanometers per cycle (i.e., over 50 times faster than that of conventional ALD). More remarkably, the reactions only took place for 10–20 minutes or less without vacuum-related equipment. The thickness of initially adsorbed water layers in cylindrical nanopores was indirectly estimated from the thickness of formed SiO2 layers. With systematic experimental designs, we tackle the classical Kelvin equation in the nanosized pores, and the role of van der Waals forces in the nanoscale wetting phenomena, which is a long-standing issue lacking experimental insight. Moreover, we show that the present strategy is likely generalized to other oxide systems such as TiO2. Our approach opens up a new avenue for ultra-simple preparation of porous oxides and allows for the room temperature formation of dielectric layers toward organic electronic and photovoltaic applications.

Graphical abstract: Rapid, conformal gas-phase formation of silica (SiO2) nanotubes from water condensates

About
Cited by
Related
Download options Please wait...

Supplementary files

Article information

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1039/C3NR00906H
Article type
Paper
Submitted
20 Feb 2013
Accepted
17 Apr 2013
First published
23 Apr 2013

Nanoscale, 2013,5, 5825-5832

Permissions

Request permissions

Rapid, conformal gas-phase formation of silica (SiO2) nanotubes from water condensates

C. Bae, H. Kim, Y. Yang, H. Yoo, J. M. Montero Moreno, J. Bachmann, K. Nielsch and H. Shin, Nanoscale, 2013, 5, 5825 DOI: 10.1039/C3NR00906H

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements