Soft landing of polyatomic anions onto three-dimensional semiconductive and conductive substrates. Issue 6 (22nd February 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Gholipour-Ranjbar, Habib; Hu, Hang; Su, Pei; Samayoa Oviedo, Hugo Yuset; Gilpin, Christopher; Wang, Haomin; Zhang, Yingying; Laskin, Julia
• Is Part Of: Nanoscale advances. Volume 5:Issue 6(2023)
• Page Start: 1672
• Page End: 1680
• Publication Date: 2023-02-22
• Subjects: 620.5
• DOI: 10.1039/d2na00632d
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2516-0230

Abstract

Abstract : Anion penetration into the semiconducting vertically aligned TiO2 nanotubes and conductive vertically aligned carbon nanotubes is examined using soft landing of well-characterized polyoxometalate anions. Abstract : Soft landing of well-characterized polyoxometalate anions, PW12 O40 3− (WPOM) and PMo12 O40 3− (MoPOM), was carried out to explore the distribution of anions in the semiconducting 10 and 6 μm-long vertically aligned TiO2 nanotubes as well as 300 μm-long conductive vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (VACNTs). The distribution of soft-landed anions on the surfaces and their penetration into the nanotubes were studied using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). We observe that soft landed anions generate microaggregates on the TiO2 nanotubes and only reside in the top 1.5 μm of the nanotube height. Meanwhile, soft landed anions are uniformly distributed on top of VACNTs and penetrate into the top 40 μm of the sample. We propose that both the aggregation and limited penetration of POM anions into TiO2 nanotubes is attributed to the lower conductivity of this substrate as compared to VACNTs. This study provides first insights into the controlled modification of three dimensional (3D) semiconductive and conductive interfaces using soft landing of mass-selected polyatomic ions, which is of interest to the rational design of 3D interfaces for electronics and energy applications.