Natural Gas: New Nanowires Built With Natural Gas Heating

A new type of nanowire is on the way! Scientists have developed a new technique for creating nanowires that has natural gas heating. The new nanowire manufacturing technique uses a self-catalytic growth process, which is assisted by thermal decomposition of natural gas. In this latest study, the researchers announced that their new technique is not only simple, it is easy and inexpensive to produce and lithium-ion batteries can benefit from this process as well.

"This strategy may open up an effective way to make other metallic/semiconducting nanomaterials via one-step synthetic reactions through an environmentally benign and cost-effective approach," the team wrote in a news release.

The researchers found that germanium nanowires are grown by reduction of germanium oxide particles and the self-catalytic growth during the thermal decomposition of natural gas and at the same time carbon sheath layers are evenly coated on the nanowire surface.

The team created a new redox-responsive assembly technique that can synthesize hierarchically structured carbon-sheathed germanium nanowires (c-GeNWs) on a large scale with the use of self-catalytic growth process, which is aided by thermally decomposed natural gas.

The team claimed that their new synthetic process allows them to synthesize hierarchically assembled materials from inexpensive metal oxides on large scales along with other metal oxides. The hierarchically assembled nanowires (C-GeNWs) have enhanced thermal and chemical stability along with remarkable electrochemical properties, according to the researchers.

The findings of this study were published in the journal Nano Letters.

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