Electron-beam-induced synthesis and characterization of W18O49 nanowires

Hierarchical core/shell PbWO4/WO3 microcrystals were subjected to convergent electron beam irradiation in a 300 kV transmission electron microscope, and W18O49 nanowires can be rapidly produced within 5 s irradiation. It was found that the produced W18O49 nanowires are single crystals with monoclinic structure. The lengths of these nanowires rapidly increase with the electron beam irradiation time and decrease with the increase of distance between source microcrystal and the formed nanowires. Our method is a quite simple and efficient way for the rapid synthesis of single-crystalline W18O49 nanowires and may be extended to synthesize other metal oxide nanowires with judicious choice of source materials.