Submitted By:

Parag Aggarwal (13105007)

Submitted To:
Dr. Vasundra Singh
 Table of Contents

OBJECTIVE.............................................................................................................. 3
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT............................................................................................. 3
INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................... 3
WHAT IS A NANO-WIRE............................................................................................ 4
SYNTHESIS OF NANO-WIRES.................................................................................... 5
SUSPENSION........................................................................................................ 5
VLS GROWTH....................................................................................................... 5
SOLUTION-PHASE SYNTHESIS............................................................................... 6
NON-CATALYTIC GROWTH.................................................................................... 6
CHEMICAL VAPOR DEPOSITION.............................................................................6
HOW NANOWIRES WORK......................................................................................... 7
PHYSICS OF NANO-WIRES...................................................................................... 8
APPLICATION OF NANO-WIRES................................................................................. 9
IN ENERGY.......................................................................................................... 9
IN ENVIRONMENT................................................................................................ 9
IN ELECTRONICS.................................................................................................. 9
CONCLUSION........................................................................................................ 10

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OBJECTIVE
The objective of this report is to make people aware about the field of
Nanotechnology and about the advancements and innovations taking place in this field. Out
of this field, one of the great innovation is the development of Nano-wires and its application
in the many different fields.
This can be further categorized as the following;

1. Making of Nano-wires through different methods.

2. Understanding the working of these wires.
3. Application of this tech. in different fields.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The Success and Final outcome of this report required a lot of guidance from many people
and I am extremely fortunate to have got this all along the completion of my report. Whatever
I have done is only due to such assistance and we would not forget to thank them.

I thank Dr. Vasundra Singh for giving me an opportunity to do the report under her
guidance. I am extremely grateful to her. I owe my profound gratitude as she took keen
interest in my report and guided us all along, till the completion of my report by providing all
the necessary information.

I am thankful and fortunate enough to get constant encouragement, support and guidance
required for successful completion of my Chemistry Report

INTRODUCTION

To fit more transistors on a chip, engineers have to design smaller transistors. The first chip
had about 2,200 transistors on it. Today, hundreds of millions of transistors can fit on a single
microprocessor chip. Even so, companies are determined to create increasingly tiny
transistors, cramming more into smaller chips. There are already computer chips that have
nanoscale. Future transistors will have to be even smaller.

Nanotechnology ("Nano-Tech") is the manipulation of matter on an atomic, molecular,

and supramolecular scale. A more generalized description of nanotechnology was

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subsequently established by the National Nanotechnology Initiative, which defines
nanotechnology as the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to
100 nano-meters. Nanotechnology as defined by size is naturally very broad, including fields
of science as diverse as surface science, organic chemistry, molecular biology, semiconductor
physics, microfabrication, etc. Nano-Tech in general deals with Nano particles.

Nanoparticles are particles between 1 and 100 nano-meters in size. In nanotechnology, a

particle is defined as a small object that behaves as a whole unit with respect to its transport
and properties. Particles are further classified according to diameter. Ultrafine particles are
the same as nanoparticles and between 1 and 100 nano-meters in size.

WHAT IS A NANO-WIRE

A nanowire is a nanostructure, with the diameter of the order of a nano-meter (109 meters). It
can also be defined as the ratio of the length to width being greater than 1000. Alternatively,
nanowires can be defined as structures that have a thickness or diameter constrained to tens
of nano-meters or less and an unconstrained length. As such they are often referred to as one-
dimensional (1-D) materials. Nanowires have many interesting properties that are not seen in
bulk or 3-D materials. This is because electrons in nanowires are quantum confined laterally

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and thus occupy energy levels that are different from the traditional continuum of energy
levels or bands found in bulk materials.

Nanowires can be incredibly thin -- it's possible to create a nanowire with the diameter of just
one nano-meter, though engineers and scientists tend to work with nanowires that are
between 30 and 60 nano-meters wide.

SYNTHESIS OF NANO-WIRES

There are two basic approaches to synthesizing nanowires: top-down and bottom-up. A top-
down approach reduces a large piece of material to small pieces, by various means such
as lithography or electrophoresis. A bottom-up approach synthesizes the nanowire by
combining constituent adatoms. Most synthesis techniques use a bottom-up approach.

SUSPENSION

A suspended nanowire is a wire produced in a high-vacuum chamber held at the longitudinal

extremities. Suspended nanowires can be produced by:

The chemical etching of a larger wire

The bombardment of a larger wire, typically with highly energetic ions

Indenting the tip of a STM in the surface of a metal near its melting point, and then
retracting it

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VLS GROWTH

A common technique for creating a nanowire is Vapor-Liquid-Solid (VLS) synthesis. This

process can produce crystalline nanowires of some semiconductor materials. It uses a source
material from either laser ablated particles or a feed gas such as silane.

VLS synthesis requires a catalyst. For nanowires, the best catalysts are liquid metal (such
as gold) nanoclusters, which can either be self-assembled from a thin film by dewetting, or
purchased in colloidal form and deposited on a substrate.

The source enters these nanoclusters and begins to saturate them. On reaching super-
saturation, the source solidifies and grows outward from the nanocluster. Simply turning off
the source can adjust the final length of the nanowire. Switching sources while still in the
growth phase can create compound nanowires with super-lattices of alternating materials.

A single-step vapour phase reaction at elevated temperature synthesises inorganic nanowires

such as Mo6S9-xIx. From another point of view, such nanowires are cluster polymers.

SOLUTION-PHASE SYNTHESIS

Solution-phase synthesis refers to techniques that grow nanowires in solution. They can
produce nanowires of many types of materials. Solution-phase synthesis has the advantage
that it can produce very large quantities, compared to other methods. In one technique,
the polyol synthesis, ethylene glycol is both solvent and reducing agent. This technique is
particularly versatile at producing nanowires of lead, platinum, and silver.

The supercritical fluid-liquid-solid growth method can be used to synthesize semiconductor

nanowires, e.g., Si and Ge. By using metal nanocrystals as seeds, [5] Si and Ge organometallic
precursors are fed into a reactor filled with a supercritical organic solvent, such as toluene.
Thermolysis results in degradation of the precursor, allowing release of Si or Ge, and
dissolution into the metal nanocrystals. As more of the semiconductor solute is added from
the supercritical phase (due to a concentration gradient), a solid crystallite precipitates, and a
nanowire grows uniaxially from the nanocrystal seed.

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NON-CATALYTIC GROWTH

Nanowires can be also grown without the help of catalysts in the gas phase. The simplest
methods to obtain metal oxide nanowires use ordinary heating of the metals at temperatures;
lower the melting point, in oxidative atmosphere (oxygen or air).

CHEMICAL VAPOR DEPOSITION

It is an example of a bottom-up approach. In general, CVD refers to a group of processes

where solids form out of a gaseous phase. Scientists deposit catalysts (such as gold
nanoparticles) on a base, called a substrate. The catalysts act as an attraction site for
nanowire formation. Scientists put the substrate in a chamber with a gas containing the
appropriate element, such as silicon, and the atoms in the gas do all the work. First, atoms in
the gas attach to atoms in the catalysts, then additional gas atoms attach to those atoms, and
so on, creating a chain or wire. In other words, the nanowires assemble themselves.

HOW NANOWIRES WORK

Depending on what it's made from, a nanowire can have the properties of an insulator,
a semiconductor or a metal. Insulators won't carry an electric charge, while metals carry
electric charges very well. Semiconductors fall between the two, carrying a charge under the
right conditions. By arranging semiconductor wires in the proper configuration, engineers can
create transistors, which either acts as a switch or an amplifier.

Some interesting -- and counterintuitive -- properties nanowires possess are due to the small
scale. When you work with objects that are at the nanoscale or smaller, you begin to enter the
realm of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics can be confusing even to experts in the
field, and very often it defies classical physics (also known as Newtonian physics).

For example, normally an electron can't pass through an insulator. If the insulator is thin
enough, though, the electron can pass from one side of the insulator to the other. It's
called electron tunnelling, but the name doesn't really give you an idea of how weird this
process can be. The electron passes from one side of the insulator to the other without
actually penetrating the insulator itself or occupying the space inside the insulator. You might

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say it teleports from one side to the other. You can prevent electron tunnelling by using
thicker layers of insulator since electrons can only travel across very small distances.

Another interesting property is that some nanowires are ballistic conductors. In normal
conductors, electrons collide with the atoms in the conductor material. This slows down the
electrons as they travel and creates heat as a by-product. In ballistic conductors, the electrons
can travel through the conductor without collisions. Nanowires could conduct electricity
efficiently without the by-product of intense heat.

PHYSICS OF NANO-WIRES

Several physical reasons predict that the conductivity of a nanowire will be much less than
that of the corresponding bulk material. First, there is scattering from the wire boundaries,
whose effect will be very significant whenever the wire width is below the free electron mean
free path of the bulk material.

Nanowires also show other peculiar electrical properties due to their size. Unlike single wall
carbon nanotubes, whose motion of electrons can fall under the regime of ballistic
transport (meaning the electrons can travel freely from one electrode to the other), nanowire
conductivity is strongly influenced by edge effects.

Furthermore, the conductivity can undergo a quantization in energy: i.e. the energy of the
electrons going through a nanowire can assume only discrete values, which are multiples of
the Von Klitzing constant G = 2e2/h (where e is the charge of the electron and h is the Planck
constant).

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APPLICATION OF NANO-WIRES

The properties of nanowires have caused researchers and companies to consider using this
material in several fields.

IN ENERGY

Development of a solar cell using graphene coated with zinc oxide nanowires which
will allow the production of low cost flexible solar cells at high enough efficiency
to be competitive.
Researchers are using a method called Aerotaxy to grow semiconducting nanowires
on gold nanoparticles. The gold nanoparticles replace the silicon substrate on
which conventional semiconductor based solar cells are built.

It is determined that sunlight can be concentrated in nanowires due to a

resonance effect. This effect can result in more efficient solar cells,
allowing more of the energy from the sun to be converted to electricity.

IN ENVIRONMENT

Using silver chloride nanowires as a photo-catalysis to decompose organic

molecules in polluted water.

Using an electrified filter composed of silver nanowires, carbon nanotubes and cotton
to kill bacteria in water.

Using nanowire mats to absorb oil spil

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IN ELECTRONICS

Using electrodes made from nanowires that would enable flat panel displays to be
flexible as well as thinner than current flat panel displays.

Using nanowires to build transistors without p-n junctions.

Using nanowires made of an alloy of iron and nickel to create dense memory devices.
Using silver nanowires embedded in a polymer to make conductive layers that can
flex, without damaging the conductor.

CONCLUSION

Through this report we all can see that how advantageous nano-wires are not in the field of
electronics but in many other fields too. The main issues related to growth of nanowires are
control over nanowire nucleation on Si substrates. When selecting a device to implement with
nanowire technology, it is important to make use of the unique advantages of nanowires: the
ability to grow hetero-structures and achieve vertical alignment of high-quality crystals.

While new material combinations can enable better transistors and the small size of
nanowires can lead to high density for devices, the holy grail still remains, i.e. to find,
understand, and use quantum-mechanical effects that are useful and impossible to obtain in
standard Si technology. With the basic building blocks now becoming available, this is
perhaps one of the most exciting and challenging areas of device research today.

REFERENCES

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanotechnology
http://www.appropedia.org/Nanocolumns/_Nanowires_fabrication_literature_review
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanowire
http://science.howstuffworks.com/nanowire3.htm
http://science.howstuffworks.com/nanowire1.htm
http://www.understandingnano.com/nanowires-applications.html

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