Statistical morphological identification of low-dimensional nanomaterials by using TEM (Open Access)--颗粒学报PARTICUOLOGY

Pu, Y., Niu, Y., Wang, Y., Liu, S., & Zhang, B. (2022). Statistical morphological identification of low-dimensional nanomaterials by using TEM. Particuology, 61, 11-17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.partic.2021.03.013

Statistical morphological identification of low-dimensional nanomaterials by using TEM (Open Access)

Yinghui Pu ^{a b 1}, Yiming Niu ^a^{b 1}, Yongzhao Wang ^{a b}, Siyang Liu ^a, Bingsen Zhang ^{a b} ^*

a Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China
b School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Shenyang 110016, China

0.1016/j.partic.2021.03.013

Volume 61, February 2022, Pages 11-17

Received 5 March 2021, Revised 30 March 2021, Accepted 30 March 2021, Available online 18 April 2021, Version of Record 27 October 2021.

E-mail: bszhang@imr.ac.cn

Highlights

• Morphology and structure of ZnO were characterized and compared by XRD and TEM.

• SAED rings of ZnO with different morphologies are obviously different.

• Statistical analysis of SAED provides more accurate aspect ratio compared with XRD.

Abstract

Nanomaterials with low-dimensional morphology display unique properties in catalysis and related fields, which are highly dependent on the structure and aspect ratio. Thus, accurate identification of the structure and morphology is the basis to correlate to the performance. However, the widely adopted techniques such as XRD is incapable to precise identify the aspect ratio of low-dimensional nanomaterials, not even to quantify the morphological uniformity with statistical deviation value. Herein, ZnO nanorod and nanosheet featured with one- and two-dimensional morphology were selected as model materials, which were prepared by the hydrothermal method and statistically characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The results indicate that ZnO nanorods and nanosheets display rod-like and orthohexagnal morphology, which mainly encapsulated with {100} and {001} planes, respectively. The 7.36 ± 0.20 and 0.39 ± 0.02 aspect ratio (c/a) of ZnO nanorods and nanosheets could be obtained through the integration of the (100) and (002) diffraction rings in selected area electron diffraction (SAED). TEM combining with the SAED is favorable compare with XRD, which not only provides more accurate aspect ratio results with standard deviation values but also requires very small amounts of sample. This work is supposed to provide a convenient and accurate method for the characterization of nanomaterials with low-dimensional morphology through TEM.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Low-dimensional nanomaterials; Transmission electron microscopy; ZnO; Selected area electron diffraction; X-ray diffraction

文章导读