An efficient methodology for measurement of the average electrical properties of single one-dimensional NiO nanorods

Abstract

We utilized a metal tantalum (Ta) ball-probe to measure the electrical properties of vertical-aligned one-dimensional (1D) nickel-oxide (NiO) nanorods. The 1D NiO nanorods (on average, ∼105ânm wide and ∼700ânm long) are synthesized using the hot-filament metal-oxide vapor deposition (HFMOVD) technique, and they are cubic phased and have a wide bandgap of 3.68âeV. When the 1D NiO nanorods are arranged in a large-area array in ohmic-contact with the Ta ball-probe, they acted as many parallel resistors. By means of a rigorous calculation, we can easily acquire the average resistance R NR and resistivity ρ NR of a single NiO nanorod, which were approximately 3.1 × 10 13 Ω and 4.9 × 10 7 Ω.cm, respectively.