Morphological Evolution of Nb2O5 in a Solvothermal Reaction: From Nb2O5 Grains to Nb2O5 Nanorods and Hexagonal Nb2O5 Nanoplatelets

Novel Nb2O5 nanorods and polygonal Nb2O5 platelets were generated by a simple solvothermal technique. The geometry evolution of the resultant Nb2O5 from amorphous nanoparticles to crystallized particles, from polygonal platelets to well-elongated nanorods was been studied in detail. The processing parameters, including the reaction temperature, reaction time, concentration of the precursors, and pH value of the solution, which affect the shape and size of the nanorods, were investigated. The Nb2O5 nanorods with different aspect ratios were examined by XRD, SEM and TEM. The experimental results show that Nb2O5 nanorod is the orthorhombic structure and well-crystallized. The growth of the nanorods follows their [001] direction. The successful generation of high quality Nb2O5 nanorods is not only important for transition metal oxide research, but also potentially important for further formation of new Nb-based 1-D nanostructures, such as NbS2 and NbN.