A team led by Prof. Qing Chen Group at Peking University have studied the kinetics of InAs dissolution in radiolytic water and observed constant rate of dissolution process even with nanowire down to 5 nm, in stark contrast from the previous studies showing dissolution rate increases upon reducing the size. The work is performed using Hummingbird Scientific Liquid Cell TEM platform and is published in Nanoscale.

Although dissolution process in nanoparticles have been thoroughly studied, there have been relatively few experimental studies using high aspect ratio one-dimensional (1D) systems such as nanowires and nanotubes. Here, the researchers enclosed InAs nanowires grown with both MBE and MOCVD of different diameters in the liquid cell and studied the dissolution induced by e-beam radiolysis of water in TEM. Interestingly,  the dissolution rate of InAs nanowires with varying diameters down to 5nm were found to be constant and surface limited. This demonstration contradicts with earlier studies suggesting that rate of dissolution increases with reduction in the size of the nanowires.

Reference: Mei Sun, Xing Li, Zhiqiang Tang, Xianlong Wei and Qing Chen. “Constant-Rate Dissolution of InAs Nanowires in Radiolytic Water Observed by In situ Liquid Cell TEM.” Nanoscale (2018). DOI:10.1039/C8NR04096F

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