ORIGINAL ARTICLE Synthesis of WS 2 and WSe 2 nanowires on stainless steel coupon by reaction under autogenic pressure at elevated temperature method R. Yuvasravan 2 • G. Apsana 2 • P. P. George 1,2 • I. Genish 1 • Shirly ben-david Maklouf 1 • Y. Koltypin 1 • A. Gedanken 1 Received: 9 June 2015 / Accepted: 28 September 2015 / Published online: 6 October 2015 Ó The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract The novel flower-like WE 2 (E = S or Se) nanoflakes are synthesized and the growth of WS 2 and WSe 2 nanowires on stain less steel coupons (SSC) is observed by reaction under autogenic pressure at elevated temperature technique between the metallic tungsten and chalcogen powders at 750 °C for 3 h. Powder X-ray diffraction, scan- ning electron microscopy and transmission electron micro- scopy are used to characterize all reaction products, viz., neat WS 2 , WSe 2 powder, WS 2 /SSC and WSe 2 /SSC (stainless steel coupon). The photoluminescence spectrum of WS 2 and WSe 2 samples are also reported. In addition, the direct use of metals as precursors will devoid the harmful effects of organometallic precursor. Keywords Deposition Á Nanoparticles Á WS 2 ? WSe 2 Introduction Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCS) have been explained by scientists to exhibit excellent electronic, magnetic and electrochemical properties which have gen- erated interest for energy-associated device applications for example solar cell and lithium batteries.(Shi et al. 2015) One-dimensional nanostructures are receiving increasing attention because of their potential applications in elec- tronics and photonics (Zhang et al. 2007). Fabrication of nanoflakes, nanorods, and nanoribbons has been demon- strated for elemental semiconductors, such as silicon and germanium compounds (Wang et al. 2000; Liang et al. 2001). Tungsten chalcogenides, WE 2 (E = S or Se) are very useful as a high-efficient solid lubricant (Erdemir and Bhusan 2001; Voevodin et al. 1999; Voevodin and Zabinski 2000) and catalyst (Wu et al. 2004; Breysse et al. 1984). In addition tungsten chalcogenides also have wide range of applications such as photoelectrochemical cells (PEC), photovoltaic (PV) solar cells (Tributsch 1977, 1978; Tributsch and Bernnett 1977; Ja ¨ger-Waldau et al. 1994; Niu et al. 2014; Matthaus et al. 1997; Srivastava and Avasthi 1985), tribology and also as electrode material in lithium ion batteries (Martin-Litas et al. 1999, 2002). The current methods used to prepare the WS 2 and WSe 2 as thin films on a variety of substrates are DC and RF sputtering method (Regula et al. 1996; Ellmer et al. 1997), sulfur- ization of ion beam sputtered WO 3 thin films (Genut et al. 1992; Ennaoui et al. 1997), pulse laser deposition (Zabinski et al. 1994), vapor deposition method(Huang et al. 2014), electrodeposition (Devadasan et al. 2001), chemical bath deposition (Chatzitheodorou et al. 1988). Pol and his coworkers had demonstrated the synthesis of WS 2 breeds embedded in carbon and WSe 2 /C nanocomposite by employing the RAPET technique (Pol et al. 2007, 2008). In the current article, the synthesis of WS 2 and WSe 2 nanocrystals with novel flower-like pattern of radially aligned nanoflakes via a RAPET method is demonstrated. The synthesis of WS 2 and WSe 2 nanowires on the SSC is also reported in this paper. There is no literature about the synthesis of WS 2 and WSe 2 nanowires on the SSC. Intense & P. P. George georgepanikulangara@yahoo.in; georgepp@mits.ac.in & A. Gedanken gedanken@mail.biu.ac.il 1 Department of Chemistry and Kanbar Laboratory for Materials, Center for Advanced Materials and Technology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel 2 Department of Chemistry, Madanapalle Institute of Technology and Science, (Affliated to JNTUA, Ananthapur and Approved by AICTE, New Delhi), Post-Box No.14, Angallu, Madanapalle 517325, AndhraPradesh, India 123 Appl Nanosci (2016) 6:855–862 DOI 10.1007/s13204-015-0503-x