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 H2TeO4 precursor. The obtained tellurium nanowires are of single-crystal in nature, with an average diameter of approximately 25 nm and length up to 10 microm. 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.