Fabrication of Multimetal Disulfide Nanotube and Its Structural Characteristics

The fabrication and structure controlling of inorganic fullerene-like nanocompounds have attracted wide interests in recent years. A new approach of exfoliating-restacking-structure controlling was applied to overcome some technological problems in present preparation approaches. MoS_2 and WS_2 powders were used as precursor materials and exfoliated into single layers by butyllithium. The sample was treated by MnCl_2 solution at 80℃ to introduce Mn~(2+) cations into the reactive system. In this way, the single layer was restacked and the structure of product could be controlled. The products were characterized by XRD, TEM and HRTEM respectively. XRD results indicate that multimetal disulfide compounds can be fabricated by this new approach. TEM results show that the morphology of the multimetal disulfide compounds exhibits hollow- like nanotubes. HRTEM results show that the structure of the hollow-like nanotubes is of double layers. And the substructure of the inner layer exhibits multi-wall shape. Based on the above results, a possible formation mechanism of hollow multi-wall nanotubes was discussed.