Controlled CVD growth of Cu–Sb alloy nanostructures

Abstract

Sb based alloy nanostructures have attracted much attention due to their many promising applications, e.g. as battery electrodes, thermoelectric materials and magnetic semiconductors. In many cases, these applications require controlled growth of Sb based alloys with desired sizes and shapes to achieve enhanced performance. Here, we report a flexible catalyst-free chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process to prepare Cu–Sb nanostructures with tunable shapes (e.g. nanowires and nanoparticles) by transporting Sb vapor to react with copper foils, which also serve as the substrate. By simply controlling the substrate temperature and distance, various Sb–Cu alloy nanostructures, e.g. Cu11Sb3 nanowires (NWs), Cu2Sb nanoparticles (NPs), or pure Sb nanoplates, were obtained. We also found that the growth of Cu11Sb3 NWs in such a catalyst-free CVD process was dependent on the substrate surface roughness. For example, smooth Cu foils could not lead to the growth of Cu11Sb3 nanowires while roughening these smooth Cu foils with rough sand papers could result in the growth of Cu11Sb3 nanowires. The effects of gas flow rate on the size and morphology of the Cu–Sb alloy nanostructures were also investigated. Such a flexible growth strategy could be of practical interest as the growth of some Sb based alloy nanostructures by CVD may not be easy due to the large difference between the condensation temperature of Sb and the other element, e.g. Cu or Co.