Chemical transformation: a powerful route to metal chalcogenide nanowires

Chemical transformation provides a simple and versatile route to inorganic nanostructures. Here we highlight the use of chemical transformation to convert trigonal selenium (t-Se) nanowires into a variety of metal chalcogenide nanostructures. As two case studies, single-crystal t-Se nanowires have been transformed into single-crystal Ag2Se nanowires through a topotactic reaction and then into single-crystal CdSe nanowires via a cation-exchange reaction.