A new and facile route to ultrafine nanowires, superthin flakes and uniform nanodisks of nickel hydroxide

A new and facile route has been developed to synthesize ultrafine nanowires, superthin nanoflakes and uniform nanodisks of β-Ni(OH)2 using ethanol as the growth media under hydrothermal conditions for the first example. The results show that β-Ni(OH)2 nanowires possess single-crystal structures with diameters of 2.0 ± 0.5 nm and lengths of 22 ± 5 nm; β-Ni(OH)2 nanoflakes have thin thicknesses (<5 nm) and large areas (>200 nm2); and the uniform nanodisks present hexagonal shapes with diameters of 150-180 nm and thicknesses of 20-25 nm. The proposed method here can be extended to synthesize other hydroxide and oxide nanostructures.