Synthesis and characterization of Mo-oxide nanoribbons

Mixed valence Mo-oxide nanoribbons have been synthesized using MoO 3 as precursor and hexadecylamine (HDA) as surfactant under hydrothermal condition at 108°C for 1 to 10 d. The morphology of the product is found to depend strongly on the duration of hydrothermal treatment, temperature and HDA/Mo ratio. The powder diffraction patterns of pre-and post-hydrothermally treated materials exhibit the highly intense and sharp reflections at low scattering angles that are typical for layered structures. The IR spectrum of Mo-HDA composite is quite similar to hydrothermal treated samples except shifting of few bands to higher energy side. The weight change in TG-DTA curves indicates the presence of HDA as intercalates. The SEM images of samples reveal the layered and flat nanoribbons formation. Dimensions of these flat nanoribbons found from SEM images are about 160 run in thickness, 430-620 nm in width and several micrometers in length. The high resolution TEM images of Mo-oxide nanoribbons corroborate the XRD results and the fringe spacing paralleling to the nanolayers is estimated to be 3.52 nm, which is close to the (001) lattice spacing of lamellar Mo-oxide nanoribbons. Copyright © 2006 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC