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.