Chemical transformation: a powerful route to metal chalcogenide nanowires

Chemical transformation provides a simple and versatile route to inorganic nanostructures. Here we highlight the use of chemical transformation to convert trigonal selenium ( t- Se) nanowires into a variety of metal chalcogenide nanostructures. As two case studies, single- crystal t- Se nanowires have been transformed into single- crystal Ag2Se nanowires through a topotactic reaction and then into single- crystal CdSe nanowires via a cation- exchange reaction.