Development and Investigation of Bismuth Nanowires; Final rept. 1 Jun 2007-31 Jan 2008

摘要

The project aims to develop Bismuth and Bismuth-based nanowires and explore their application in sensing and uncooled IR detection. It has made significant progress in this seedling phase. Two methods for synthesizing Bi and BiS nanowires have been developed as a result. One method offers the advantage of having both uniform and pre-defined diameters in the fabricated Bi nanowire array. It is developed from a template-based growth technique that was first demonstrated by our group a decade earlier and has now been further improved with controllable diameter variation. The second method makes use of a redox biomolecule, glutathione, a well known antioxidant abundant in fruits, as both a feedstock and self-assembling agent. The biosynthesized BiS nanowires are remarkable in that they have a high degree of structure uniformity and an expected highest thermoelectric powers that will be proven in the follow-on phase.