This dissertation describes the invention and development of a new nanolithographic method: On-Wire Lithography (OWL). OWL is a simple, reproducible, and high-throughput procedure for the synthesis and lithographic processing of metal nanowires (i.e. Au, Ag, Pt, Ni, and Cu) that allows researchers to control the morphology and feature size of such nanowires over the sub-5 nm to micrometer length scale. This procedure combines advances in template-directed synthesis of metal nanowires with electrochemical deposition and wet-chemical etching, and allows the routine fabrication of metal architectures that would be difficult, if not impossible, to generate with any other known lithographic methodology. Using the OWL procedure, we prepared Au nanowires with gaps that range in size from 2.5 nm to over 2 mm, a length scale that many other synthetic techniques cannot match. In addition to the routine preparation of nanowires with single or multiple gaps, the OWL process allows us to produce supported Au nanodisk arrays as well. Both gap size and disk thickness can be designed and controlled precisely from the nanometer to the micrometer scale. Importantly, OWL has enabled both fundamental scientific study and applications-driven material development that would be impossible otherwise. The dissertation describes the invention and development of OWL and the demonstration of a 2.5 nm gap using tunneling current measurement, followed by applications of the nanostructures generated via OWL in nanoelectronics, optics, and catalysis

Last modified

• 08/13/2018

Creator

• Lidong Qin

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N2NT5K

Subject

• Chemistry

Keyword

• Inorganic
• Chemistry

Date created

• 2007-10-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright