title: The race of nanowires: morphological instabilities and a control strategy.
abstract: The incomplete growth of nanowires that are synthesized by template-assisted electrodeposition presents a major challenge for nanowire-based devices targeting energy and electronic applications. In template-assisted electrodeposition, the growth of nanowires in the pores of the template is complex and unstable. Here we show theoretically and experimentally that the dynamics of this process is diffusion-limited, which results in a morphological instability driven by a race among nanowires. Moreover, we use our findings to devise a method to control the growth instability. By introducing a temperature gradient across the porous template, we manipulate ion diffusion in the pores, so that we can reduce the growth instability. This strategy significantly increases the length of nanowires. In addition to shedding light on a key nanotechnology, our results may provide fundamental insights into a variety of interfacial growth processes in materials science such as crystal growth and tissue growth in scaffolds.
authors: Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and ‡Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Princeton University , Princeton, New Jersey 08544, United States.
authors: Sangwoo
authors: S
authors: Shin
authors: Talal T
authors: TT
authors: Al-Housseiny
authors: Beom Seok
authors: BS
authors: Kim
authors: Hyung Hee
authors: HH
authors: Cho
authors: Howard A
authors: HA
authors: Stone
mesh_terms: D055664:Electrochemical Techniques; D006358:Hot Temperature; D008956:Models, Chemical; D053770:Nanowires / Q000737:chemistry*