ICT2014 Abstracts

Nanowires have been considered as a high-performance thermoelectric material with large Seebeck coefficient due to quantum confinement effect and low thermal conductivity originating from enhanced boundary scattering of phonons. In this work, a seed-assisted growth method to synthesize bismuth nanowires has been developed by the combination of seed synthesis and seed growth. The bismuth seeds were firstly synthesized by reducing BiCl₃ in the ice water with NaBH₄ and served as nucleation centers of bismuth nanowires. Then, bismuth nanowires with 40-50 nm in diameter and several tens of micrometers in length were grown on bismuth seeds by reducing NaBiO₃ with ethylene glycol. X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy were employed to investigate the effects of reductant and temperature on the microstructures of bismuth nanowires. It is discovered that precisely controlling the temperature is very important for adjusting the growth rate and morphology of bismuth nanowires. The bismuth nanowires are perfectly single crystals. The selected area electron diffraction pattern confirmed that the growth direction of bismuth nanowire is parallel to [110] direction.