title: Ultrafast Microwave Nano-manufacturing of Fullerene-Like Metal Chalcogenides.
abstract: Metal Chalcogenides (MCs) have emerged as an extremely important class of nanomaterials with applications ranging from lubrication to energy storage devices. Here we report our discovery of a universal, ultrafast (60 seconds), energy-efficient, and facile technique of synthesizing MC nanoparticles and nanostructures, using microwave-assisted heating. A suitable combination of chemicals was selected for reactions on Polypyrrole nanofibers (PPy-NF) in presence of microwave irradiation. The PPy-NF serves as the conducting medium to absorb microwave energy to heat the chemicals that provide the metal and the chalcogenide constituents separately. The MCs are formed as nanoparticles that eventually undergo a size-dependent, multi-stage aggregation process to yield different kinds of MC nanostructures. Most importantly, this is a single-step metal chalcogenide formation process that is much faster and much more energy-efficient than all the other existing methods and can be universally employed to produce different kinds of MCs (e.g., MoS2, and WS2).
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849, USA.|Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-4111, USA.
authors.forename: Zhen
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Materials Research and Education Center, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849, USA.
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH 44555, USA.
authors.forename: Ruigang
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849, USA.
authors.forename: Selcuk
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Poyraz
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849, USA.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cook
authors.affiliation: Surface Science Laboratory, Department of Physics, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849, USA.
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Bozack
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-4111, USA.
authors.forename: Siddhartha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Das
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849, USA.
authors.forename: Xinyu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-4111, USA.
authors.forename: Liangbing
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hu