Electron beam nanosculpting of Kirkendall oxide nanochannels.
The nanomanipulation of metal nanoparticles inside oxide nanotubes, synthesized by means of the Kirkendall effect, is demonstrated. In this strategy, a focused electron beam, extracted from a transmission electron microscope source, is used to site-selectively heat the oxide material in order to generate and steer a metal ion diffusion flux inside the nanochannels. The metal ion flux generated inside the tube is a consequence of the reduction of the oxide phase occurring upon exposure to the e-beam. We further show that the directional migration of the metal ions inside the nanotubes can be achieved by locally tuning the chemistry and the morphology of the channel at the nanoscale. This allows sculpting organized metal nanoparticles inside the nanotubes with various sizes, shapes, and periodicities. This nanomanipulation technique is very promising since it enables creating unique nanostructures that, at present, cannot be produced by an alternative classical synthesis route.
Chimie des Interactions Plasma-Surface (ChIPS), CIRMAP, Research Institute for Materials Science and Engineering, University of Mons , 23 Place du Parc, B-7000 Mons, Belgium.
Abdel-Aziz
AA
El Mel
Leopoldo
L
Molina-Luna
Marie
M
Buffière
Pierre-Yves
PY
Tessier
Ke
K
Du
Chang-Hwan
CH
Choi
Hans-Joachim
HJ
Kleebe
Stephanos
S
Konstantinidis
Carla
C
Bittencourt
Rony
R
Snyders