Alkoxide-based precursors for direct drawing of metal oxide micro- and nanofibres.

The invention of electrospinning has solved the problem of producing micro- and nanoscaled metal oxide fibres in bulk quantities. However, until now no methods have been available for preparing a single nanofibre of a metal oxide. In this work, the direct drawing method was successfully applied to produce metal oxide (SnO, TiO, ZrO, HfO and CeO) fibres with a high aspect ratio (up to 10 000) and a diameter as small as 200 nm.