A General Strategy for Fabricating Unique Carbide Nanostructures with Excitation Wavelength-Dependent Light Emissions

Carbide materials have received significant investigation in recent years. However, it is a significant challenge to fabricate carbide nanostructures with the existing synthetic methods. Here we report a simple method via laser ablation in organic reagents to fabricate various novel carbide nanostructures including W2C@C core-shell nanoparticles, pearl-like SiC nanorings, and fullerene-like carbon spheres. These fabricated carbide nanostructures (W2C@C, SiC nanorings) show excitation wavelength-dependent light emissions and can be tuned in a wide range, possessing application potentialities in optical devices operated at harsh conditions (e.g., high temperature, high pressure, and strong corrosive chemical atmosphere).