Directed self-assembly of nanorod networks: bringing the top down to the bottom up.

Self-assembled electrodeposited nanorod materials have been shown to offer an exciting landscape for a wide array of research ranging from nanophotonics through to biosensing and magnetics. However, until now, the scope for site-specific preparation of the nanorods on wafers has been limited to local area definition. Further there is little or no lateral control of nanorod height. In this work we present a scalable method for controlling the growth of the nanorods in the vertical direction as well as their lateral position. A focused ion beam pre-patterns the Au cathode layer prior to the creation of the anodized aluminium oxide (AAO) template on top. When the pre-patterning is of the same dimension as the pore spacing of the AAO template, lines of single nanorods are successfully grown. Further, for sub-200 nm wide features, a relationship between the nanorod height and distance from the non-patterned cathode can be seen to follow a quadratic growth rate obeying Faraday's law of electrodeposition. This facilitates lateral control of nanorod height combined with localized growth of the nanorods.

The controlled fabrication and geometry tunable optics of gold nanotube arrays.

Arrays of vertically aligned gold nanotubes are fabricated over several square centimetres which display a geometry tunable plasmonic extinction peak at visible wavelengths and at normal incidence. The fabrication method gives control over nanotube dimensions with inner core diameters of 15-30 nm, wall thicknesses of 5-15 nm and nanotube lengths of up to 300 nm. It is possible to tune the position of the extinction peak through the wavelength range 600-900 nm by varying the inner core diameter and wall thickness. The experimental data are in agreement with numerical modelling of the optical properties which further reveal highly localized and enhanced electric fields around the nanotubes. The tunable nature of the optical response exhibited by such structures could be important for various label-free sensing applications based on both refractive index sensing and surface-enhanced Raman scattering.

High-performance biosensing using arrays of plasmonic nanotubes.

We show that aligned gold nanotube arrays capable of supporting plasmonic resonances can be used as high performance refractive index sensors in biomolecular binding reactions. A methodology to examine the sensing ability of the inside and outside walls of the nanotube structures is presented. The sensitivity of the plasmonic nanotubes is found to increase as the nanotube walls are exposed, and the sensing characteristic of the inside and outside walls is shown to be different. Finite element simulations showed good qualitative agreement with the observed behavior. Free standing gold nanotubes displayed bulk sensitivities in the region of 250 nm per refractive index unit and a signal-to-noise ratio better than 1000 upon protein binding which is highly competitive with state-of-the-art label-free sensors.

Toward self-assembled ferroelectric random access memories: hard-wired switching capacitor arrays with almost Tb/in.(2) densities.

We report on the successful fabrication of arrays of switchable nanocapacitors made by harnessing the self-assembly of materials. The structures are composed of arrays of 20-40 nm diameter Pt nanowires, spaced 50-100 nm apart, electrodeposited through nanoporous alumina onto a thin film lower electrode on a silicon wafer. A thin film ferroelectric (both barium titanate (BTO) and lead zirconium titanate (PZT)) has been deposited on top of the nanowire array, followed by the deposition of thin film upper electrodes. The PZT nanocapacitors exhibit hysteresis loops with substantial remnant polarizations, while although the switching performance was inferior, the low-field characteristics of the BTO nanocapacitors show dielectric behavior comparable to conventional thin film heterostructures. While registration is not sufficient for commercial RAM production, this is nevertheless an embryonic form of the highest density hard-wired FRAM capacitor array reported to date and compares favorably with atomic force microscopy read-write densities.