Synthesis of biomorphic ZnO interwoven microfibers using eggshell membrane as the biotemplate

A simple and green technique has been developed to prepare hierarchical biomorphic ZnO, using eggshell membrane (ESM) as the template. ESM was infiltrated with zinc nitrate solution and subsequently sintered at high temperatures to produce the final ZnO interwoven nanofibers. Different from traditional immersion technics, the whole synthesis process depends more on the restriction or direction functions of the ESM biomacromolecules. The precision replication of natural biostructures can be achieved by the assembly of ZnO nanocrystallites about 5 nm. Consequently, the interwoven meshwork at three dimensions is formed due to the direction of biotemplate. The action mechanism is summarily discussed here. It may bring the biomorphic ZnO semiconductors with hierarchical interwoven structures to more applications, such as catalysts, photoelectrochemical devices, etc. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.