Sulfur Nanowires Elaboration and Structural Characterization

Abstract

We have fabricated sulfur nanowires by immersion of a nanoporous anodic alumina template in a S-CS2 solution. Structural properties of these nanowires were investigated by means of various techniques as scanning, transmission and high resolution electron microscopy (SEM, TEM, HRTEM) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). We found that the porous template imposes a preferential direction on the growing of the wires and, at the same time, there were several curly wires when they were released from the template. Nevertheless, the crystalline structure differs from the corresponding bulk sulfur, and preliminary DSC characterization shows a melting behavior that differs also from the one observed on bulk sulfur.