| Abstract Scope |
One-dimensional nanostructures attracted in the past years a high interest due to their properties. However, only the metals as one of the oldest were difficult to fabricate in sub-micrometer diameter dimensions. Historically, metal whiskers were produced by recipes originating from Lazarus Ercker’s mining book from 1574. The fundamental principles of these processes were the evaporation of a metal salt, the reduction of said salt in the vapor phase and the condensation of the elemental metal atoms on a usable substrate. We modified this ancient recipe for ultra-high vacuum PVD systems. It is possible grow perfect defect and flaw free nanostructures with diameters of several ten nanometers. Metals with face centered (Cu, Ag, Au, Pd), body centered (Fe), and hexagonal (Co) crystal structure were synthesized successfully as one-dimensional nanowhiskers (NWs) with the new technique. We report our investigations on growth, microstructure and preliminary results on nanowhiskers physical properties. |