Rational Synthesis and Structural Characterizations of Complex TiSi2 Nanostructures

We present in this article our successes in synthesizing TiSi2 nanostructures with various complexities using a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. Attention has been paid to understanding the growth mechanism. The governing factor was found to be the surface energy differences between various crystal planes of orthorhombic TiSi2 (C54 and C49), because of their specific atomic arrangements of Si and Ti on the surfaces. This understanding has allowed us to control the growth morphologies and obtained one-dimensional (1D) nanowires, two-dimensional (2D) nanonets and three-dimensional (3D) complexes with rational designs by tuning the precursor chemical reactions. Careful studies of the atomically-resolved microstructures revealed the existence of distorted C54 phases in 3D complexes, which was attributed to playing the key role in the unique structure formation. These results are expected to shed light on metal silicide nanostructure growths broadly and to present opportunities for novel nanostructure syntheses.