Anisotropic growth and photoluminescence of Li2Si2O5 hydrate rods

Herein, we developed a facile one-pot hydrothermal route to synthesize uniform functional Li2Si2O5 hydrate rod-like crystals. The growth of such unique anisotropic morphology underwent an in situ crystallization involving ordered attachment and Ostwald ripening of Li2SiO3 nanoparticles, and reactive transformation of Li2SiO3-to-Li2Si2O5 hydrate processes. The obtained Li2Si2O5 hydrate rods possessed a uniform size with a length of about 5 mu m and a diameter of about 100-200 nm, indicating aspect ratio higher than 20 that reflected the anisotropic growth. The Li2Si2O5 hydrate rods exhibited excellent adsorption performance of methylene blue and the methylene blue-bearing Li2Si2O5 hydrate featured interesting photoluminescence performance of red emission at 675 nm compared with the reported value. The result endowed the Li2Si2O5 hydrate rods with a potential application as an optical probe for organic dye's recognition.