Syntheses, properties and applications of some selected inorganic nanomaterials
Jagadese J. Vittala,b
aDepartment of Chemistry, Gyeongsang National University, Jinju 660-701, KOREA
bDepartment of Chemistry, National University of Singapore , SINGAPORE 117543
Among a number of methods available to synthesize inorganic materials, the inorganic elements are already incorporated in the single molecular precursor route and it is a matter of removing the unwanted organic fragments by different methods to obtain inorganic materials as powder, thin films or nanocrystals. Appropriate design of the precursor molecule and optimization of experimental conditions help in controlling the decomposition pathway and crystal phase of inorganic materials. In this talk the use of metal complexes in the syntheses of selected metal sulfides, selenides and telluride nanocrystals including Ag2Se, Ag2Te, AgInE2 (E
= S, Se) and CuInS2 will be presented.
The second part of the talk will be focussed on the new synthetic efforts to obtain high performance lithium ion battery (LIB) materials. LiFePO4 has been extensively studied as an alternative cathode material to replace LiCoO2 for rechargeable LIBs. The advantages of this over LiCoO2 are low cost, less toxic, high thermal stability and less structural modification during cycling, but it is an insulator. In order to improve the electronic conductivities of LiFePO4 the size of the nanoparticles along b-axis should be reduced and the surface of the nanocrystals should be uniformly coated with conducting materials. We addressed how to overcome both these issues in a simple hydrothermal method and improved the storage performance of lithium batteries at high current operation.
