| dc.description.abstract | As the critical dimensions for advanced devices continue to scale towards the nanometer regime, one-dimensional (1-D) metal nanowires have attracted much attention due to their potential applications in advanced microelectronic and magnetic devices. However, the conventional methods used to fabricate periodic nanowires arrays are usually high-cost consuming and low output efficiency. Therefore, this study mainly focused on the synthesis of large-scale nickel metal nanowires at low-cost and high-throughput without complex lithography.
To fabricate the size-tunable Ni metal nanowire arrays, the anodic alumina oxide (AAO) templates with 2-D periodic nanopore structures were firstly prepared by the two-step anodizing process. In this work, the pore sizes of AAO templates can be tuned from 20-50 nm by varying the component of electrolyte, the processing temperature, and the applied anodic voltage. Under controlled electrodeposition conditions, a large amount of pure Ni metal nanowires were successfully synthesized by using the AAO template technique. The diameters and lengths of the as-synthesized Ni nanowires were measured to be about 20-50 nm and 60-67 ?m, respectively, corresponding to the pore sizes and thickness of AAO templates. Based on the TEM and SAED analysis, it is found that all the prepared Ni nanowires were polycrystalline, and these polycrystalline Ni nanowires possess a FCC structure. On the other hand, the as-synthesized Ni nanowires were found to be very sensitive to the magnetic field. In this study, we experimentally demonstrated that by applying external magnetic fields, these Ni nanowires can be controlled to align along the directions of applied magnetic fields and assemble into a 2-D ordered pattern on Si substrate. | en_US |