Silicates Nanostructures: Synthesis And Property Investigation

Due to abundant resource, low cost, and unique properties, silicates have been widely applied in many fields, such as fluorescent material, ion exchange, catalysis, medicine delivery, etc. Via simple, green and economical method controllable synthesis functional silicates nanomaterials with desired crystal structure and dimensions and exploiting the actual value is of great significance. The paper mainly studied on the controllable synthesis of silicates nanomaterials, modification of nickel silicate nanotubes, and their applications in the removal of heavy metal ions and lithium ion battery, etc.To zinc silicates, amorphous OD hollow spheres have been successfully synthesized in ethanol/polyethylene glycol system, and 1D nanowires,2D membranes obtained in water system. The structure-related adsorption properties have been studied. A detailed study about the removal ability for Pb(â…¡), Cd(â…¡), Cr(â…¢) and Fe(â…¢) ions was performed. The amorphous OD hollow spheres show best removal ability for all detected metal ions. Particularly, it is 128.62mg/g for Pb(â…¡) ions, twice the amount of reported hollow spherical magnesium silicate. However, crystalline 1D nanowires and 2D membranes removal abilities are found to be dependent on the oxidation number of the target metal ion. In general, nanowires show better removal capacity for trivalent ions, especially for Fe(â…¢) ion, while 2D membranes exhibit better removal capacity for bivalent ions.To nickel silicates, OD core-shell and hollow spheres were successfully synthesized in the ethanol/polyethylene glycol system, and highly crystalline and thermally stable multi-walled Ni3Si2O5(OH)4 nanotubes with layered structure were obtained in water system via a facial and simple method. The nickel ions between layers could be reduced in situ to form size-tunable Ni nanocrystals, which endowed these nanotubes with tunable magnetic properties. Additionally, the unique layered structure of Ni3Si2O5(OH)4 nanotubes provided favorable transport kinetics for lithium ions and it exhibits good cycle discharge capacity when the nanotubes were used as anode material of lithium ion battery. This multifunctional inorganic nanotube may also find applications in catalysis and drug delivery fields, etc.Additionally, we also synthesized cobalt silicate core-shell and hollow spheres, cadmium silicates nanostructures in ethanol/polyethylene glycol system. We have tried to synthesize germanates in water system.