Hydrothermal synthesis and characterization of MoS2 nanorods

MoS2 nanorods were successfully synthesized via hydrothermal method by adding sillicontungstic acid as an additive. The products were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectrum (XPS) and field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). XRD pattern result indicated that the as-prepared sample can be indexed to a mixture of hexagonal and rhombohedral phase MoS2. XPS showed that the nanorods were only composed of Mo and S with atomic ratio of 1:2. FESEM images revealed that the MoS2 rods had uniform sizes with mean diameters of about 20-50 nm and lengths of 400-500 nm. It was found that the addition of sillicontungstic acid played a crucial role in the formation of the rod-like MoS2 in our experiment. The possible formation mechanism of MoS2 nanorods is also discussed. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.