Synthesis of Ultra-long Hollow Chalcogenide Nanofibers

Nanoengineered materials with advanced architectures are critical building blocks to modulate conventional material properties or amplify interface behavior for enhanced device performance. While several techniques exist for creating one dimensional heterostructures, electrospinning has emerged as a versatile, scalable, and cost-effective method to synthesize ultra-long nanofibers with controlled diameter (a few nanometres to several micrometres) and composition. In addition, different morphologies (e.g., nano-webs, beaded or smooth cylindrical fibers, and nanoribbons) and structures (e.g., core-.shell, hollow, branched, helical and porous structures) can be readily obtained by controlling different processing parameters. Although various nanofibers including polymers, carbon, ceramics and metals have been synthesized using direct electrospinning or through post-spinning processes, limited works were reported on the compound semiconducting nanofibers because of incompatibility of precursors. In this work, we combined electrospinning and galvanic displacement reaction to demonstrate cost-effective high throughput fabrication of ultra-long hollow semiconducting chalcogen and chalcogenide nanofibers. This procedure exploits electrospinning to fabricate ultra-long sacrificial nanofibers with controlled dimensions, morphology, and crystal structures, providing a large material database to tune electrode potentials, thereby imparting control over the composition and shape of the nanostructures that evolved during galvanic displacement reaction.