Impregnating ionic Pt species on vanadium oxide nanotubes

Vanadium oxide nanotubes (VNT) have drawn increasing attention as vanadium compounds may be used in a wide range of applications. In this contribution, VNT was synthesized by a hydrothermal treatment from V2O5 using hexadecylamine as template. XRD, FTIR, SEM, TEM/HRTEM and TG analyses were used to investigate their chemical stability and suitability to adsorb platinum ionic species without damaging the nanostructure. It was shown that the nanostructures are open-ended multiwalled nanotubes, formed by 13–16 layered walls, with inner diameter of 30–50 nm and outer diameter of 150–200 nm. The impregnation of Pt was found to be feasible but their structure and morphology are sensitive to the pH of the impregnation media.