a Department of Applied Physics, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-8628, Japan;b National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0003, Japan;c Low Temperature Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology, Espoo, Finland
Abstract:
We succeed in synthesizing NbSe2 nanotubes along with nanofibers by chemical vapor transportation. They are stable crystalline systems and can be synthesized reproducibly in a nearly equilibrium reacting process. We have investigated these nanosize structures of NbSe2 by transmission electron microscopy and electron diffraction. Both of the structures have a similar size of 100–200 nm in diameter. While nanotubes consist of rolled-up NbSe2 layers, nanofibers are a pile of thin flat layers. We propose a mechanism of the formation of NbSe2 nanotubes and nanofibers on the basis of deseleniditive transition from a NbSe3 fiber-shaped crystal. We also measured electrical resistance of the nanofibers with conductive atomic force microscopy and demonstrated that the material show metallic behavior at room temperature.