Ilaria Lombardi

Synthesis of metallic and semiconductor nanowires for the detection of chemical species.

An important frontier in modern technology is the quest for new devices to sense and control our physical and chemical environment. In particular, nanowires are interesting systems that couple extremely high resonant frequencies and very small force constants, thus showing unprecedented sensitivity to force or added mass. In this project, porous anodic alumina (PAA) is used as a template material for nanowires growth. Both vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) growth process and electrodeposition are employed to fill the nanopores of the template and to obtain arrays of aligned nanowires with uniform diameter and length in a simple and economic way.