Shape-control of strontium titanate nanostructures by a surface-capping soft chemical process

A surface-controlling soft chemical process is reported for tuning the morphologies of strontium titanate (SrTiO3) nanostructures. The conventional surfactant-free soft chemical process produced polycrystalline SrTiO3 nanoparticle aggregates generated by the dissolution-growth reaction. Alternatively, in order to synthesize single-crystal SrTiO3 nanorods, we employed the surface-capping soft chemical process using a polyacrylic acid (PAA) polymer capping-reagent. The single-crystal SrTiO3 nanorods prepared using PAA were observed to have facets with different diameters from a few nm to similar to 200 nm, lengths up to several mu m, rectangular cross-sections, and crystal-axe perpendicular to the growth axis of the nanorods. A high-yield of nanorods over 90 % was also obtained in the total volume of the product.