A green chemical approach to the synthesis of tellurium nanowires

Starch, an economical and safe carbohydrate, has been found to be not only an effective reducing agent but also a new morphology-directing agent for the synthesis of tellurium nanowires using commercial H ₂TeO ₄ precursor. The obtained tellurium nanowires are of single-crystal in nature, with an average diameter of ∼25 nm and length up to 10 μm. A possible synthetic mechanism involves the chain-shaped bioorganic molecule acting as a template for the one-dimensional growth of inorganic tellurium. The effects of different chain-shaped structures and concentrations of biomolecules on the nanowire morphology have been investigated and different one-dimensional structures, including thick rods, short nanowires, bunched nanowires, and assembled spikelet structures, have been fabricated. These experimental results have been found to be useful in substantiating the proposed synthetic mechanism.