(334f) Developing Low-Cost Nanowire Sensors Based on a Seed-Mediated Solution Process

This talk describes the translation of research discovery and patented technology made in our lab into nanosensor devices. Nanowires have been applied to sensing for over 10 years but few nanowire sensors have reached the market. The major barriers are the complexity of manufacturing and difficulty in connecting nanowires in devices. Our technology can potentially overcome these barriers by using a different approach and with materials not previously used as nanowires. We discovered that when mixing organic crystalline compounds with nanoparticles in a solution, nanowires nucleated on nanoparticles upon solvent evaporation. We developed and tested a working hypothesis that links the nanowire formation to the nanoconfinement effect imposed by the nanoparticle seed. The nanoconfinement concept has been successfully applied to the synthesis of nanowires of conductive tetrathiafulvalene charge-transfer and potassium tetracyanoplatinate salts on gold nanoparticle seeds using electrocrystallization. We further synthesized the organic nanowires directly on microelectronic substrates by using features of the substrate pattern as nucleation points for nanowire formation. We tested the nanowire device for electrochemical sensing of different vapors. This research contributes new nanowire materials as signal transducers in nanosensor devices built on commercial electronic components.