Synthesis of Single‐Crystalline Silicon Nitride Nanobelts Via Catalyst‐Assisted Pyrolysis of a Polysilazane

Abstract

Recently, one-dimensional nanostructures have attracted extensive attention since they are potentially important for both applications and fundamental research. In this paper, we report the synthesis of ultra-long single crystal Si₃N₄ nanobelts via catalyst-assisted pyrolysis of polymeric precursors. The obtained products contain both α- and β-Si₃N₄ nanobelts, which are 50–100 nm in thickness, 400–1000 nm in width, and a few hundreds of micrometers to several millimeters in length. Different from previous techniques for synthesizing one-dimensional structures, the current nanobelts are synthesized through confined crystallization of an amorphous phase. A solid–liquid–gas–solid reaction/crystallization growth mechanism is proposed. The formation of nanobelts instead of nanowires is attributed to the anisotropy growth at an earlier stage.