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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 March 2011
Two-dimensional layered ceramics, highly anisotropic materials in terms of structure and properties, were used to produce polymer-covered metal nanorods and metal microcrystals. The procedure took advantage of the intrinsic planar, layered ordering of the metal cations suitable to be reduced and could be further used to engineer one-dimensional metal alloy nanostructures by appropriate doping of the initial layered ceramic lattice with suitable cationic species. The procedure involved the formation in an intermediate step of a polymer-intercalated ceramic nanocomposite, highly porous to the diffusion of the polymerizable reducing agent, pyrrole. Two structurally similar layered bismuthates, Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ and Bi6Sr2CaO12 and a partially Rh-substituted ceramic, Bi4Rh2Sr2CaO12 were used as the precursor layered ceramics and the reducible metal cations were Cu2+, Bi3+, and Rh3+, respectively. The formation of the polymer-covered metal nanorods and metal microcrystals took place at relatively high temperatures of reaction (325 °C) and long reaction times (10–12 days).