Nanowires are arguably the most studied nanomaterial model to make functional devices and arrays. Although there is remarkable maturity in the chemical synthesis of complex nanowire structures, their integration and interfacing to macro systems with high yields and repeatability still require elaborate aligning, positioning and interfacing and post-synthesis techniques. Top-down fabrication methods for nanowire production, such as lithography and electrospinning, have not enjoyed comparable growth. Here we report a new thermal size-reduction process to produce well-ordered, globally oriented, indefinitely long nanowire and nanotube arrays with different materials. The new technique involves iterative co-drawing of hermetically sealed multimaterials in compatible polymer matrices similar to fibre drawing. Globally oriented, endlessly parallel, axially and radially uniform semiconducting and piezoelectric nanowire and nanotube arrays hundreds of metres long, with nanowire diameters less than 15 nm, are obtained. The resulting nanostructures are sealed inside a flexible substrate, facilitating the handling of and electrical contacting to the nanowires. Inexpensive, high-throughput, multimaterial nanowire arrays pave the way for applications including nanowire-based large-area flexible sensor platforms, phase-changememory, nanostructure-enhanced photovoltaics, semiconductor nanophotonics, dielectric metamaterials,linear and nonlinear photonics and nanowire-enabled high-performance composites.

We produced kilometer-long, endlessly parallel, spontaneously piezoelectric and thermally stable poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) micro- and nanoribbons using iterative size reduction technique based on thermal fiber drawing. Because of high stress and temperature used in thermal drawing process, we obtained spontaneously polar γ phase PVDF micro- and nanoribbons without electrical poling process. On the basis of X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, we observed that PVDF micro- and nanoribbons are thermally stable and conserve the polar γ phase even after being exposed to heat treatment above the melting point of PVDF. Phase transition mechanism is investigated and explained using ab initio calculations. We measured an average effective piezoelectric constant as -58.5 pm/V from a single PVDF nanoribbon using a piezo evaluation system along with an atomic force microscope. PVDF nanoribbons are promising structures for constructing devices such as highly efficient energy generators, large area pressure sensors, artificial muscle and skin, due to the unique geometry and extended lengths, high polar phase content, high thermal stability and high piezoelectric coefficient. We demonstrated two proof of principle devices for energy harvesting and sensing applications with a 60 V open circuit peak voltage and 10 μA peak short-circuit current output. (Figure Presented). © 2014 American Chemical Society

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Although label-free biosensors comprised of optical microcavities inherently possess the capability of resolving molecular interactions at individual level, this extreme sensitivity restricts their convenience for large scale applications by inducing vulnerability towards non-specific interactions that readily occur within complex media. Therefore, the use of optical microresonators for biosensing is mostly limited within strictly defined laboratory conditions, instead of field applications as early detection of cancer markers in blood, or identification of contamination in food. Here, we propose a novel surface modification strategy suitable for but not limited to optical microresonator based biosensors, enabling highly selective biosensing with considerable sensitivity as well. Using a robust, silanebased surface coating which is simultaneously protein resistant and bioconjugable, we demonstrate that it becomes possible to perform biosensing within complex media, without compromising the sensitivity or reliability of the measurement. Functionalized microtoroids are successfully shown to resist nonspecific interactions, while simultaneously being used as sensitive biological sensors. This strategy could pave the way for important applications in terms of extending the use of state-of-theart biosensors for solving problems similar to the aforementioned.Label-free detection of chemical and biological species is an indispensable analytical method providing fast and reliable qualitative and quantitative information regarding the composition of analyte, and comprehension of interaction among biomolecules 1-3 . Among various label free biodetection techniques such as surface plasmon resonance 4 and quartz crystal microbalance 5 , optical microresonators of whispering gallery mode (WGM) type, where light is confined in a circular path inside the periphery of the resonator by means of continuous total internal reflection 6 , particularly possess outstanding potentials by virtue of their extreme sensitivity towards the alterations of the refractive index of the media they reside within 7 . Light can be evanescently coupled to these optical microcavities using tapered optical fibres as resonant modes 8 , which can be tracked by continuously scanning the wavelength of a tuneable laser around the resonant wavelength and observed as Lorentzian shaped dips in the transmission spectrum of the tapered fibre 9,10 . The linewidth of the resonant mode is inversely proportional to the quality factor (Q) of the microresonator, representing its ability of storing optical power 11 . Especially surface tension induced microcavities, which surface roughness, one of the main sources of optical losses due to scattering from the surface, is diminished by a thermal treatment causing the melting and reflowing of the material constituting the microresonator 12 , such as microspheres 13 and microtoroids 14 , have extremely narrow resonance linewidths. This enables detection of even single adsorption events causing shifts in the resonance wave...

Integration of nanowires into functional devices with high yields and good reliability turned out to be a lot more challenging and proved to be a critical issue obstructing the wide application of nanowire-based devices and exploitation of their technical promises. Here we demonstrate a relatively easy macrofabrication of a nanowire-based imaging circuitry using a recently developed nanofabrication technique. Extremely long and polymer encapsulated semiconducting nanowire arrays, mass-produced using the iterative thermal drawing, facilitate the integration process; we manually aligned the fibers containing selenium nanowires over a lithographically defined circuitry. Controlled etching of the encapsulating polymer revealed a monolayer of nanowires aligned over an area of 1 cm 2 containing a 10 × 10 pixel array. Each light-sensitive pixel is formed by the contacting hundreds of parallel photoconductive nanowires between two electrodes. Using the pixel array, alphabetic characters were identified by the circuitry to demonstrate its imaging capacity. This new approach makes it possible to devise extremely large nanowire devices on planar, flexible, or curved substrates with diverse functionalities such as thermal sensors, phase change memory, and artificial skin.