Functional Nanowires
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Abstract Nanotechnology offers the promise of enabling revolutionary advances in diverse areas ranging from electronics, optoelectronics, and energy to healthcare. Underpinning the realization of such advances are the nanoscale materials and corresponding nanodevices central to these application areas. Semiconductor nanowires and nanobelts are emerging as one of the most powerful and diverse classes of functional nanomaterials that are having an impact on science and technology. In this issue of MRS Bulletin, several leaders in this vibrant field of research present brief reviews that highlight key aspects of the underlying materials science of nanowires, basic device functions achievable with these materials, and developing applications in electronics and at the interface with biology. This article introduces the controlled synthesis, patterned and designed self-assembly, and unique applications of nanowires in nanoelectronics, nano-optoelectronics, nanosensors, nanobiotechnology, and energy harvesting.
Nanowires As Building Blocks for Bottom-Up Nanotechnology The field of nanotechnology represents an exciting and rapidly expanding research area that crosses the borders between the physical, life, and engineering sciences.1 Much of the excitement in this area of research has arisen from recognition that new phenomena, multifunctionality, and unprecedented integration density are possible with nanometer-scale structures. In general, there are two philosophically distinct approaches for creating small objects: top-down and bottom-up. In the top-down approach, small features are patterned in bulk materials by a combination of lithography, etching, and deposition to form functional devices and their integrated systems. The top-down approach has been exceedingly successful in many venues, with microelectronics being perhaps the best example today. While developments continue to push the resolution limits of the top-down approach, these improvements in resolution are associated with a near-exponential increase in cost associated with each new level of manufacturing facility. This economic limitation and other scientific challenges with the top-down approach, such as making nanostructures with near-atomic perfection and incorporating materials with distinct chemical and functional properties, have motivated efforts worldwide to search for new strategies to meet the demand for nanoscale structures today and in the future.2–4
The bottom-up approach, in which functional structures are assembled from well-defined chemically and/or physically synthesized nanoscale building blocks, much like the way nature uses proteins and other macromolecules to construct complex biological systems, represents a powerful alternative approach to conventional top-down methods.3,5 The bottom-up approach has the potential to go far beyond the limits and functionality of top-down technology by defining key nanometer-scale metrics through synthesis and subsequent assembly—not by lithography. Moreover, it is highly likely that the bottom-up appro
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