Researchers at Tokyo Metropolitan University have developed a technique to create self-assembled nanowires on a scale and adapt their configuration using chemical vapor testimony (CVD).
In order to keep miniature electronics going, more computing power needs to be packed in the same space, making smaller and smaller wiring and components.
An imaginary atom-thick wire, for example, would be the ultimate target. This could give rise to new categories of electronic and energy dissipation devices, as the electrons traveling through them will behave more and more even though they are moving into a one-dimensional world rather than a three-dimensional world.
Scientists have already been able to transform materials such as carbon nanotubes and transition metal cocogenides (TMCs), alloys of transition metals and group 16 elements that can be self-assembled into atom-scale nanoviruses. It has a three-atom diameter (chagall cogen atoms have metal atoms between the three corners of a triangular-like frame and on each side) and has van der Waals surfaces, and is reported to have a one-dimensional metallic nature.
Even though TMC was invented 40 years ago, it is still a challenge to build it on proportional and useful lengths and mass production of nanoviruses is not yet out of reach.
Now, a team from Tokyo Metropolitan University has developed a method of making long wires of transition metal telluride nanowires on unprecedented scales.
Using CVNs, they can assemble these nanoviruses into different configurations depending on the substrate they use as samples. Adjusting the composition of the substrate allowed the researchers to create centimeter-sized wafers in configurations, including random networks of monolayers, bilayers, and bundles of wires, such as atom-thin sheets, all with different applications.
The design of the nanowires themselves was very crystalline and orderly, and their properties (including excellent conductivity and one-dimensional behavior) matched those predicted by theory.
Large-scale production of long, crystalline nanowires will be valuable for further research on these compositions, which have so far been restricted due to the lack of TMC nanowire samples. It also marks an important step towards real-world nanowire applications.
“The ability to achieve large-scale synthesis and to manipulate the direction of nanowire growth is important, as it provides a potential tool for scalable, direct approach patterning of TMC nanowires through surface engineering,” the researcher wrote in them. Nano Letters Paper. “Current findings offer a new platform for novel study and application [one-dimensional] Nanowire systems contribute not only to new discoveries in basic low-dimensional physics, but also to the creation of future applications in electronics and energy storage / conversion devices. “
The header image does not illustrate the nanowire configuration created in this study.
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