Crystalline Tellurium Nanowires Enabled by Rapid Hydrolysis of Lithium‐Intercalated Layered Metal Tellurides

ABSTRACT Tellurium (Te) nanowires attracted significant attention due to their unique magneto‐electric effect, thermoelectric properties and strong piezoelectricity. However, their controlled synthesis using traditional methods, including microwave irradiation, thermal evaporation and hydrothermal synthesis, suffers from serious trade‐offs between prolonged processing and limited crystal quality, preventing their widespread applications. Herein, we demonstrate an ultrafast, surfactant‐free strategy that enables scalable synthesis of solution‐processable crystalline Te nanowires within seconds. In this method, lithium‐intercalated MoTe 2 (denoted as Li x MoTe 2 ) , obtained from the initial synthetic step, undergoes a rapid hydrolysis reaction that completes on a sub‐second timescale at room temperature. Subsequently, the structural expansion induced by in‐situ H 2 formation breaks Mo─Te bonds, facilitating the uniform and rapid growth of Te nanowires with an average length of ∼824 nm and width of ∼21 nm. These solution‐processed crystalline Te nanowires exhibit a hole mobility of 8.7 cm 2 V −1 s −1 at room temperature and deliver fast photoresponse across the visible light regime (405–638 nm). They display remarkable weak‐light detection capability, as evidenced by a high specific detectivity of 1×10 8 Jones. This rapid synthetic approach paves the way for further applications of crystalline Te nanowires in electronic devices, energy conversion and optoelectronic devices.