Electrical properties of individual gold nanowires arrayed in a porous anodic alumina template

Abstract

A procedure to fabricate a highly ordered electrodeposited nanowire array in a porous anodic alumina template with nanowires of uniform length and exposed tips for establishing low‐resistance ohmic contacts has been demonstrated. In this work, contacts to Au nanowire arrays have been investigated as a model system. The structural, topographical and electrical characteristics of the nanowire array have been studied using field emission scanning electron microscopy and conductive atomic force microscopy. Measurements showed that an electrical contact between the conducting AFM probe and the exposed Au nanowire tips was initiated only after a force of 14.4 ± 2 nN was applied. The I –V characteristics were linear up to the maximum applied current density of 1.5 × 1012 A/m2, and the resistivity of the individual Au nanowires in the template was estimated to be between 1.4 and 7 times the resistivity of large grained bulk Au. (© 2007 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Determining the optimal contact length for a metal/multiwalled carbon nanotube interconnect

“…This is hardly the case in reality, as evidence for contamination layers of unspecified origin are often reported. 5 Often, such contamination layers are reduced by activating the contacts by an applied electric field, 6 by rapid thermal annealing, 7 or by current-induced Joule heating. 8 The constriction of injected electrons through localized defects along a nanowire is also possible, resulting in many parallel Sharvin-like points of contact between a metal film and a nanowire.…”

Piezoelectric Size Effects in a Zinc Oxide Micropillar

“…The inset in Fig. 2 shows a selected area electron diffraction where the electron beam is parallel to the [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] zone axis of the ZnO. The indexed diffraction pattern confirms the hexagonal structure of the ZnO thin film.…”

“…The effect of ZnO size on piezoelectric properties at a range of 1.5-7 μm pillars is characterized by PFM under standard piezoelectric phenomena [29,30]. In the piezoelectric measurements, the interaction between the tip and electric field was ignored [31].…”

“…Recently, various experimental studies have probed either the electrical [15,16] or mechanical [17][18][19] behavior of nanowires separately. Riaz et al [20] experimentally and initially studied electrical potential-related size effects of ZnO nanowire using both the high-temperature vaporliquid-solid (VLS) and the low-temperature aqueous chemical growth (ACG) methods.…”

Growth and properties of Au nanowires

“…Also Au nanowires promise applications in nanoelectronics, biomedicine, sensing and catalysis [13,14], especially after the discovery of quantum conductance through individual rows of suspended gold atoms [15]. Au nanowires and other nanostructures [16][17][18][19][20] with special features such as conductance [21,22] and transport properties [23,24] have been reported and also been at the focus of several theoretical studies [17, [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33].…”