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Germanium is considered as a potential anode material for sodium-ion batteries due to its fascinating theoretical specific capacity. However, its poor cyclability resulted from the sluggish kinetics and large volume change during repeated charge/discharge poses major threats for its further development. One solution is using its ternary compound as an alternative to improve the cycling stability. Here, high-purity CuGeO 3 nanowires were prepared via a facile hydrothermal method, and their sodium storage performances were firstly explored. The as-obtained CuGeO 3 delivered an initial charge capacity of 306.7 mAh g -1 along with favorable cycling performance, displaying great promise as a potential anode material for sodium ion batteries.

Semiconductor nanowires are versatile building blocks for optoelectronic devices, in part because nanowires offer an increased freedom in material design due to relaxed constraints on lattice matching during the epitaxial growth. This enables the growth of ternary alloy nanowires in which the bandgap is tunable over a large energy range, desirable for optoelectronic devices. However, little is known about the effects of doping in the ternary nanowire materials, a prerequisite for applications. Here we present a study of p-doping of In x Ga 1-x P nanowires and show that the growth dynamics are strongly affected when diethylzinc is used as a dopant precursor. Specifically, using in situ optical reflectometry and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy we show that the doping results in a smaller nanowire diameter, a more predominant zincblende crystal structure, a more Ga-rich composition, and an increased axial growth rate. We attribute these effects to changes in seed particle wetting angle and increased TMGa pyrolysis efficiency upon introducing diethylzinc. Lastly, we demonstrate degenerate p-doping levels in In x Ga 1-x P nanowires by the realization of an Esaki tunnel diode. Our findings provide insights into the growth dynamics of ternary alloy nanowires during doping, thus potentially enabling the realization of such nanowires with high compositional homogeneity and controlled doping for high-performance optoelectronics devices.