Pressure injection bismuth nanowires

Pressure injection bismuth nanowires, 175-177 experimental setup, 174 nanowire fabrication, 173-177 template requirements, 175 Washburn equation, 174-175 Pressure swing adsorption, adsorption, 80 Protein microtube-mediated synthesis, nanostructured materials, 15-16 Purification, olefin-diene, 117... 

Figure 6(a) shows a SEM image of bismuth nanowires embedded in an anodic alumina template after pressure injection. The pore diameter of the template was about 42 nm, and the maximum pressure and temperature applied for the injection process were about 310 bar and 325°C, respectively. A small amount of copper was introduced into hquid bismuth to enhance its injection the copper atoms should be segregated from bismuth during solidification because they have zero solubihty in solid bismuth. Upon solidification, the copper flakes were brought to the top surface of Bi due to their... 

The smallest diameter attained for bismuth nanowires by the pressure injection method was about 13 nm, using a pressure of approximately 0.3 kbar (Zhang et al., 1999). Finer nanowires might be fabricated by increasing injection pressures (Huber et al., 2000), but it remains to be seen if the anodic alumina templates would retain their structural integrity under those high pressures. 

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