Nanoscale Kirkendall effect for the synthesis of Bi2MoO6 boxes via a facile solution-phase method

A one-pot surfactant-free method has been successfully developed to synthesize Bi2MoO6 boxes using MoO3 nanorods as templates. A formation mechanism involving the nanoscale Kirkendall effect has been proposed. Our work demonstrates the generic feature of a mild solution-phase-mediated nanoscale Kirkendall effect for the synthesis of multicomponent materials with box-like structures.