One-step fabrication of surface-decorated inorganic nanowires via single-nozzle electrospinning

One-dimensional heterostructured nanomaterials represent key building blocks for nanotechnologies due to a large number of applications such as electronics, catalysis, drug delivery, and energy storage and conversion devices. Electrospinning has been considered a straightforward and versatile method to prepare inorganic nanowires, but the heterostructured nanowires have been only fabricated by using dual-nozzle or by introducing additional encapsulating step. Here we report one-step fabrication of surface-decorated inorganic nanowires via single-nozzle electrospinning. Although the electrospinning precursor uses one mixed solution containing nickel salt, ceria nanoparticles, and polyvinylpyrrolidine (PVP), the nanowires show a core/shell-like shape. The surface-decorated nanowires consist of nickel shell and ceria core, which exhibits 95.52% of methane conversion at 600 °C whereas conventional particle-type catalysts have only 60% at the same temperature in steam reforming.