Center for Functional Nanomaterials Seminar

As a directed assembly method, the dielectrophoretic fabrication of interconnects from nanostructures is an attractive route because it allows for the simple interfacing and characterization of nanostructures However, the nanoparticulate structure of these interconnects limits their conductivity mainly due to the Coulomb blockade effect.1 Temperature-dependent conductance experiments with dielectophoretically fabricated gold nanorod interconnects confirmed this assignment. Hence, structurally uniform interconnects are desired, particularly for 1-D transport experiments and nano-biological applications. To this end, we have developed an innovative approach to growing individual nanowires between targeted points on lithographic electrodes. This technique is called directed electrochemical nanowire assembly (DENA).2-4 The DENA technique enables the single-step growth and interconnecting of diameter-tunable crystalline nanowires. The nanowire composition can be chosen from a wide variety of metals. A feedback-controlled growth program has been developed that enables the low-contact resistance interconnecting of DENA-grown gold nanowires with the lithographic electrodes. To our best knowledge, the sub 15  contact-resistance of these DENA-grown gold nanowires is the smallest that has been attained by any single-step nanowire growth and interconnecting approach. Due to these characteristics, DENA-grown nanowires are good specimens for 1-D transport experiments.