Titanium nanowire via electrospun polymer nanocomposite template

Methods are presented to prepare titanium nanowires for biomedical applications via an electrospun polymer nanocomposite as a sacrificial template. Electrospinning provides a relatively inexpensive and efficient method to produce long and narrow nanofibers compared to other methods including solution phase synthesis and chemical vapor deposition. A polyvinylpyrrolidone/titanium nanocomposite mesh is electrospun from a solution of 35 mg/mL of polyvinylpyrrolidone and 35 mg/mL of titanium nanoparticles to obtain a nanocomposite mesh of -200-400 nm in diameter. Heat treatment of this nanocomposite mesh removes the polymer and sinters the Ti nanoparticles into nanowires. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) reveals that this new method results in a titanium oxide nanowire mesh that is composed of long strands of sintered nanoparticles. The composition of the titanium oxide nanowires was determined by energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and x-ray diffraction (XRD).