Surfactant-assisted solvothermal synthesis of single-crystalline ternary Bi–Sb–Te hexagonal nanoplates

Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 hexagonal nanoplates have been successfully obtained by a simple solvothermal method assisted by the surfactant CTAB. The result shows that the obtained nanoplates are single crystal and the perpendicular direction to nanoplate is along c-axis of lattice structure. The product morphologies can be tuned by changing the added content of surfactant CTAB and water/ethanol volume ratio. The surfactant oriented growth mechanism for hexagonal nanoplates of ternary (Bi,Sb)2Te3 is proposed.