A Generalized Crystallographic Description of All Tellurium Nanostructures

Despite tellurium being less abundant in the Earth's crust than gold, platinum, or rare‐earth elements, the number of industrial applications of tellurium has rapidly increased in recent years. However, to date, many properties of tellurium and its associated compounds remain unknown. For examp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Advanced materials (Weinheim) 2018-02, Vol.30 (6), p.n/a
Main Authors: Kim, Min‐Seok, Ma, Xing‐Hua, Cho, Ki‐Hyun, Jeon, Seung‐Yeol, Hur, Kahyun, Sung, Yun‐Mo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
chalcogens
crystallographics
Crystallography
Earth crust
Gold
Industrial applications
Intermetallic compounds
Materials science
Nanostructure
Platinum
Rare earth elements
Synthesis
Tellurides
Tellurium
tellurium nanostructures
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Summary:Despite tellurium being less abundant in the Earth's crust than gold, platinum, or rare‐earth elements, the number of industrial applications of tellurium has rapidly increased in recent years. However, to date, many properties of tellurium and its associated compounds remain unknown. For example, formation mechanisms of many tellurium nanostructures synthesized so far have not yet been verified, and it is unclear why tellurium can readily transform to other compounds like silver telluride by simply mixing with solutions containing silver ions. This uncertainty appears to be due to previous misunderstandings about the tellurium structure. Here, a new approach to the tellurium structure via synthesized structures is proposed. It is found that the proposed approach applies not only to these structures but to all other tellurium nanostructures. Moreover, some unique tellurium nanostructures whose formation mechanism are, until now, unconfirmed can be explained. A generalized crystallographic description of all Te nanostructures is presented. Until now, there have been wrong approaches to the Te structure, and these make it impossible to elucidate why tellurium nanostructures form tube‐shaped morphologies and some unique features like a helical belt. The new crystallographic view at the atomic level can solve unconfirmed formation mechanisms.
ISSN:0935-9648
1521-4095
DOI:10.1002/adma.201702701