Fabrication of Metal Nanowires Containing Highly Controllable Nanospaces

Hollow nanostructures are of scientific and technological interest in the broad applications due to their ability to interact with other materials not only at their surfaces, to modulate refractive index, to improve the catalytic activity and to lower the density of nanostructures [1]. To prepare hollow structures, various methods such as versatile template methods based on the removal of sacrificial template [2] and simple templateless method [3] have been developed and enable to incorporate the void space or nanospaces into various nanostructures such as the nanosphene, nanocubes, nanorods and nanowires. Among these nanostructures, porous nanowires have much attention in the many field because they acquire the above advantages of hollow structures as well as the advantage of 1 D structures [4]. On the other hand, the precise control of pore size, volume and density in arbitrary structures is important because the size, volume and density directly determine the new ability depending on the nanospaces to provide the desired functions. Herein, we report the facile, high-throughput and novel route to fabricate the metal nanowires containing highly controllable nanospaces.   

　The metal nanowires containing highly controllable nanospaces were fabricated by the template method based on the removal of sacrificial template. We choose Nickel (Ni) as the metal and Silver (Ag) as the sacrificial template. We confirmed the Ni nanowires containing highly controllable Ag segment were fabricated by the pulsed electrodeposition in Anodic Aluminum oxide template. After etching the Ag segment, we clearly observed the Ni nanowires containing highly controllable nanospaces. By taking the advantage of the well controllability of the electroplating conditions such as the time of the deposition and the concentration of the plating solution, we found the size and the pitch of the hollowed segments were successfully controlled. 

[1] Y. Zhao et al., Advanced Materials 2009, 21, 3621.

[2] F. Carusoet al., Science 1998, 282, 1111.

[3] Y. Yin et al., Science 2004, 304, 711.

[4] H. Jiang et al., Chemical Communications 2012, 48, 4465.