Complementary capillary and mechanically induced alignment strategies for the assembly of nanorods with submicron diameters

J. K. LIM, B. Y. LEE, M. L. PEDANO, A. J. SENESI, J-W. JANG, W. SHIM, S. HONG, AND CHAD A. MIRKIN.

SMALL

WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH

Año: 2010 vol. 6 p. 1736 - 1740

1613-6810

Recently, we developed a template synthesis[1] technique termed on-wire lithography (OWL) that allows one to synthesize silica-supported nanowires with tunable nanogaps from multisegmented nanowire.[2] These OWL-generated nanostructures have beenused to construct molecular transport junctions with molecules that fit within the gaps and are therefore, promising entities for studying the intrinsic electronic properties of molecules.[3] Large-diameter nanowires are often more mechanically stable than smaller structures, but they are difficult to assemble and align due to the large inertial force acting upon them. Indeed, noncovalent chemical interaction approaches, which are often used for the assembly of  nanomaterials,[6–8] provide insufficient forces to induce the alignment of heavy, large-diameter nanowires.  Herein, we report two complementary methods that are simple and effective for the alignment of both individual and multiple nanowires over large areas. In both schemes, Au nanowires (360nm diameter, 5mm long) are assembled and aligned by employing either capillary or mechanical forces. In these studies, capillary-force-based approaches have proven useful for the alignment of groups of wires over large areas, while mechanical force approaches are better suited for the individual placement of nanowires.