Recent patents on fabrication of nanowires.
Nanowires are the building blocks of future nanodevices and thus methods for fabricating nanowires of various materials in various forms are fundamentally important. Although nanowires have been intensively studied, there are only a few methods that showed promising characteristics for practical applications. Here, we intend to review those patents, which enable nanowire growth to be more controllable and feasible for applications. Various methods for fabricating metal, semiconductor and organic nanowires with promising features are reviewed, where some emphasize the characteristics of individual nanowires, others address the uniformity and alignment of an array of nanowires as a whole. The patents for fabricating nanowires of various materials are introduced in the first part. In the second part, the patents to improve crystalline quality, morphology, uniformity of nanowires are introduced. Finally, the patents for growing aligned nanowire arrays and aligning dispersed nanowires are reviewed.
Liu
Chuan-Pu
CP
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan 70101, Taiwan. cpliu@mail.ncku.edu.tw
Wang
Ruey-Chi
RC
Kuo
Chien-Lin
CL
Liang
Yu-Han
YH
Chen
Wei-Yu
WY
D053770:Nanowires / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000592:standards / Q000648:ultrastructure; D010330:Patents as Topic