Rapid growth of SiO2 nanowires on carbon fiber

Abstract

We report a novel preparing route to SiO2 nanowires, which can be regarded as a modified electrochemical process, where a single C fiber is used as a substrate on which SiO2 nanowires grow, and a heating source, and tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) as an electrolyte and cooling medium. The preparing process can proceed well at ambient temperature and pressure. A good quality of SiO2 nanowires can be easily obtained at 160[Formula: see text]V for only 10[Formula: see text]s, and exhibit excellent photoluminescence (PL) property. Our study also shows that reaction time, current intensity, and TEOS concentration mainly govern the formation and growth of SiO2 nanowires. The morphology, structure and composition of the as-synthesized samples were characterized by SEM, XPS, Raman, FTIR, and PL, respectively.