Designing ordered nanoarrays from aqueous solutions

Abstract

The design and large-scale fabrication of ordered arrays consisting of advanced and well-defined building blocks such as quantum dots, nanorods, and nanowires is essential to the creation of new devices based on nanoscience. A concept as well as a growth model and a thin film technique have been developed by the author to contribute to these challenges. These ideas and synthesis method led to the creation of a new generation of functional materials from aqueous solutions with designed morphology and orientation, which are in better adequacy with their applications. Nanomaterials are growing directly onto various substrates by heteronucleation from the thermohydrolysis of aqueous metal salt precursors. Although this bottom-up technique allows the generation of anisotropic and oriented build-ing blocks of various length scales and on many types of substrates, it is carried out without template, surfactant, applied field, or undercoating. Therefore, high-purity, low-cost, and large-scale fabrication of advanced nanomaterials is achieved. In addition, the direct contact growth between 1-D building blocks and their substrate is an essential feature to take full advantage of oriented nanorods, that is, a direct path for electron/hole transport. This specific conformation is of particular interest in developing more efficient devices such as sensors and photovoltaic cells. © 2006 IUPAC.