Surfactant-assisted growth of novel La2(MoO4)3 dendritic nanostructures via facile hydrothermal processes

In this paper, we report for the first time the successful synthesis of novel uniform La2(MoO4)3 dendritic single-crystalline nanostructures via a surfactant-assisted hydrothermal approach. The dendritic nanostructure is composed of trunks with length of several micrometers and plenty of side branches. Both of the trunks and the branches are composed of nanoflakes with thickness of 30-50 nm. The branches are oriented nearly parallel to each other and form an angle of about 45 degrees to the trunk. The polyethylene glycol (PEG) acts as a morphology-directing agent, and by adjusting the experimental parameters, the microstructure of the processed materials could be further controlled in a certain range. The action mechanism of the surfactant has been proposed. This method is a simple and economical route for nanostructure fabrication and might provide a practical reference to the controlled synthesis of other micro-architectures. In addition, the photoluminescence properties of La2(MoO4)3:Eu dendritic nanostructures were studied.