Nanowires and nanotubes are being studied intensively as essential elements for future nanoscale electronics, but some fundamentals remain to be worked out—among them, how to put wires only a handful of atoms in diameter where you want them. The smallest-diameter nanowires today are built in a “bottom-up” fashion, assembled atom-by-atom through a chemical growth process such as chemical vapor deposition. This is essentially a bulk process; it produces haystacks of jumbled nanowires of varying lengths and diameters. “The normal research approach,” explains NIST electronics engineer Curt Richter, “is to throw a whole bunch of these down on the test surface, hunt around with a microscope until you find a good-looking wire in about the right place, and use lithography to attach electrical contacts to it.”
Although not at all suited to mass production, the technique’s fine level of control allows NIST engineers to place single nanowires wherever they want to create elaborate structures for testing nanowire properties. They’ve demonstrated this by building a multiple-electrical-contact test structure for measuring the resistance of a nanowire independent of contact resistance, and a simple electromechanical “switch” suitable for measuring the flexibility of nanowires. They’ve used the technique successfully with nanowires greater than about 60 nm in diameter, and say sharper probe tips and high-resolution microscopes could push the limit lower. ###
*Q. Li, S. Koo, C.A. Richter, M.D. Edelstein, J.E. Bonevich, J.J. Kopanski, J.S. Suehle and E.M. Vogel. Precise alignment of single nanowires and fabrication of nanoelectromechanical switch and other test structures. IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology. V.6, No.2. March 2007.
Contact: Michael Baum michael.baum@nist.gov 301-975-2763 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
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