Nano Express
A novel facile synthesis and characterization of molybdenum nanowires
1 Jozef Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, Ljubljana, 1000, Slovenia
2 National Institute of Chemistry, Hajdrihova 19, Ljubljana, 1000, Slovenia
3 Electronics and Photonics Research Institute, AIST, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8568, Japan
Nanoscale Research Letters 2012, 7:567 doi:10.1186/1556-276X-7-567
Published: 13 October 2012Abstract
We describe a straightforward technique to synthesize pure Mo nanowires (NWs) from Mo6SyIz (8,2 < y + z ≤ 10) NWs as precursor templates. The structural transformations occur when Mo6SyIz NWs are annealed in Ar/H2 mixture leading to the formation of pure Mo NWs with similar structures as initial morphologies. Detailed microscopic characterizations show that large diameters (>15 nm) Mo NWs are highly porous, while small diameters (<7 nm) are made of solid nanocrystalline grains. We find NW of diameter 4 nm can carry up to 30 μA current without suffering structural degradation. Moreover, NWs can be elastically deformed over several cycles without signs of plastic deformation.
