UV-Light induced fabrication of CdCl2 nanotubes through CdSe/Te nanocrystals based on dimension and configuration control

Since the discovery Of WS2 nanotubes in 1992 (Nature 1992, 360, 444), there have been significant research efforts to synthesize nanotubes and fullerene-like hollow nanoparticles (HNPs) of inorganic materials (Nat, Nanotechnol, 2006, 1, 103) due to their potential applications as solid lubrications (J. Mater. Chem. 2005, 15, 1782), chemical sensing (Adv. Funct. Mater. 2006, 16, 371), drug delivering (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2005, 127, 7316), catalysis (Adv. Mater. 2006, 18, 2561), or quantum harvesting (Acc. Chem, Res. 2006, 39, 239). Nanotubes can be produced either by rolling up directly from layer compounds (Nature 2001, 410, 168) or through other mechanisms (Adv. Mater. 2004, 16, 1497) such as template growth (Nature 2003, 422, 599) and decomposition (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2001, 123, 4841). The Kirkendall effect, a classical phenomenon in metallurgy (Trans. AIME 1947, 171, 130), was recently exploited to fabricate hollow 0-D nanocrystals (Science 2004, 304, 711) as well as 1-D nanotubes; (Nat, Mater. 2006, 5, 627). Although the dimension of resulting hollow nanostructures depends on precursors, the hollow nanomaterials can also be organized into various dimensional nanostructures spontaneously or induced by an external field. In this letter, we report, for the first time, the UV-light induced fabrication of the ends-closed 1-D CdCl2 nanotubes from 0-D CdSe solid nanocrystals through the Kirkendall effect and the head-to-end assembled process. Our results demonstrate the possibility to control the dimension (0-D to 1-D) and the configuration (solid to hollow) of nanostructures simultaneously and have implications in fabricating hollow nano-objects from zero-dimensional to multidimensional.