Bottom-up device fabrication via the seeded growth of polymer-based nanowires

Date

2020

Authors

El-Zubir, Osama
Kynaston, Emily L.
Gwyther, Jessica
Nazemi, Ali
Gould, Oliver E. C.
Whittell, George R.
Horrocks, Benjamin. R.
Manners, Ian
Houlton, Andrew

Journal Title

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Volume Title

Publisher

Chemical Science

Abstract

The bottom-up assembly of nanoelectronic devices from molecular building blocks is a target of widespread interest. Herein we demonstrate an in situ seeded growth approach to produce a nanowire-based electrical device. This exploits the chemisorption of block terpolymer-based seed fibres with a thiophene-functionalised corona onto metal electrodes as the initial step. We then use these surface-bound seeds to initiate the growth of well-defined one-dimensional fibre-like micelles via the seeded growth method known as “Living crystallisation-driven self-assembly’’ and demonstrate that they are capable of spanning an interelectrode gap. Finally, a chemical oxidation step was used to transform the nanofibres into nanowires to generate a two-terminal device. This seeded growth approach of growing well-defined circuit elements provides a useful new design tool for bottom-up device fabrication.

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Citation

El-Zubir, O., Kynaston, E. L., Gwyther, J., Nazemi, A., Gould, O. E. C., Whittell, G. R., … Houlton, A. (2020). Bottom-up device fabrication via the seeded growth of polymer-based nanowires. Chemical Science, 11(24). https://doi.org/10.1039/d0sc02011g