The arrows indicate the nano porous and channels where nanowires are formed.
Industrial production and use of nanowires is limited. The main reason is that their small dimensions, few nanometers, make very difficult to produce, manipulate and introduce them into macroscale devices.
A scientific team led by Marisol Martin-Gonzalez, at the Microelectronics Institute of Madrid (IMM) of the CSIC has developed a method to produce a type of three dimensional structures of nanowires in the form of networks. The nanowires have applications in microelectronics, optical devices or energy sectors.
The method is based on the use of porous templates that work as nanomoulds. These templates, created by the CSIC scientists, are composed of alumina and have an array of longitudinal nanopores, whose diameter is 40 nanometers , which are perpendicularly interconnected through transversal nanochannels (each one is 30 nanometers diameter).
The nanowires are formed into these pores and channels, perfectly ordered as a 3D nanoarchitecture., When the structure is formed, the template can be dissolved obtaining as a result a free-standing 3D nanowire network –if nanowires were not connected in this network structure, they would collapse.
This nanostructure has simultaneously the advantages of the nanoscale with the advantages of macroscopic manipulation, because although nanowires have nanometric diameters, the whole structure has a micrometric size. Scientists say that it could be easily adapted, in most of the cases, as a substitute of the nanowires that nowadays are obtained as a layers.
The scientists have obtained in the laboratory three-dimensional structures of inorganic materials such as the thermoelectrical Bi2Te3, and organic materials, such as polystyrene. Also it is possible to separate the electrical properties from the optical properties, what enables the obtention of materials with different colours. The resulting properties depend on the material used to grow the nanowires.
Contact:
Marisa Carrascoso Arranz
Vicepresidencia Adjunta de
Transferencia del Conocimiento- CSIC
Tel.: + 34 – 91 568 15 33