Formation of nanometer-sized porous GaSb particles by vacancy clustering induced by electronic excitation

Abstract

Porous materials play an important role for developments of luminescent, catalytic, hydrogen storage materials and so on, in which the properties can be greatly improved by a large surface-to-volume ratio. If we can prepare a porous structure not only in the bulk materials but also in the interior of individual nanoparticles, it is expected that the porous structure increases the surface area of the nanoparticles. We found that phase changes take place by atom displacements when GaSb semiconductor compound nanoparticles are excited by electron beam [1,2]. In the present work, the formation of porous semiconductor GaSb compound nanoparticles by clustering of vacancies introduced efficiently by electronic excitation and the formation mechanism has been studied by in situ TEM.