Electrospun carbon nanofibre-assisted patterning of metal oxide nanostructures

Monsur Islam; Christian Dolle; Ahsana Sadaf; Peter G Weidler; Bharat Sharma; Yolita M Eggeler; Dario Mager; Jan G Korvink

doi:10.1038/s41378-022-00409-8

Electrospun carbon nanofibre-assisted patterning of metal oxide nanostructures

Microsyst Nanoeng. 2022 Jun 29:8:71. doi: 10.1038/s41378-022-00409-8. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Monsur Islam^#¹, Christian Dolle², Ahsana Sadaf¹, Peter G Weidler³, Bharat Sharma¹, Yolita M Eggeler², Dario Mager¹, Jan G Korvink^#¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Microstructure Technology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany.
² Microscopy of Nanoscale Structures & Mechanisms (MNM), Laboratory for Electron Microscopy (LEM), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Engesserstr. 7, D-76131 Karlsruhe, Germany.
³ Institut für Funktionelle Grenzflächen, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

This work establishes carbon nanofibre-mediated patterning of metal oxide nanostructures, through the combination of electrospinning and vapor-phase transport growth. Electrospinning of a suitable precursor with subsequent carbonization results in the patterning of catalyst gold nanoparticles embedded within carbon nanofibres. During vapor-phase transport growth, these nanofibres allow preferential growth of one-dimensional metal oxide nanostructures, which grow radially outward from the nanofibril axis, yielding a hairy caterpillar-like morphology. The synthesis of metal oxide caterpillars is demonstrated using zinc oxide, indium oxide, and tin oxide. Source and substrate temperatures play the most crucial role in determining the morphology of the metal oxide caterpillars, whereas the distribution of the nanofibres also has a significant impact on the overall morphology. Introducing the current methodology with near-field electrospinning further facilitates user-defined custom patterning of metal oxide caterpillar-like structures.

Keywords: Nanowires.