Synthesis of Metal Vanadate Nanostructures

Mixed metal oxides (MeTMOs) combining a metal and a transition metal oxide have recently become a subject of great interest these days. Metal-vanadtes/tungstates/molybdates etc. are special class of materials that have emerged various interesting physical and chemical properties and many more are yet to be explored. Molybdates are quite interesting for their photoluminescence, photoswitches, photocatalytic, magnetic behavior etc. Whereas tungstate are interesting for sensing of beuteanol/ethanol, for photocatalytic efficiency, for water splitting etc. Among all MeTMOs, metal vanadates (MeVOs where Me = Ag, Bi, Fe, Ca, etc.) are quite interesting because of their various applications in the area of catalysis, photoluminescence, as an antibacterial agent, photocatalytic activities, multiferroic behavior and nanotribology. Lithium base Silver vanadate batteries are most stable and widely used for cardioverter-defibrillators. The silver vanadate nanowires decorated with silver nanoparticles showed promising antibacterial activity against a MRSA strain of S. aureus, with a minimum growth inhibitory concentration value ten folds lower than oxacillin. Silver vanadates nanowires has also shown very good lubrication (low friction coefficient) at high temperature. Seeing all these various applications of vanadate nanostructures, it is quite interesting to synthesize vanadate nanostructures in a controlled way. This review focuses the growth of various metal vanadate nanostructures. Among all vanadates silver and Bismuth vanadates are studied extensively form their structural as well as properties point of view. This review deals the detailed literature review on the silver and Bismuth vanadates besides some other metals and rare earth based metal vanadates.