Novel reduced graphene oxide (RGO) nanosheet/PtPd nanowire hybrids were prepared by a mild wet chemical approach. Uniform Pt nanowire arrays are successfully supported on functionalized RGO nanosheets with Pd nanoparticles as growing seeds. The whole deposition process was achieved in aqueous solution at room temperature. TEM and HRTEM analysis indicated the single-crystal feature of the Pt nan...

Materials that have subwavelength structure can add degrees of freedom to optical system design that are not possible with bulk materials. We demonstrate two lenses that are composed out of lithographically patterned arrays of elliptical cross-section silicon nanowires, which can dynamically reconfigure their imaging properties in response to the polarization of the illumination. In each elemen...

We consider a finite-length ferromagnetic nanowire, in which the evolution of the magnetization vector is governed by the Landau-Lishitz equation. We first compute all steady-states of this equation, and prove that they share a quantization property in terms of a certain energy. We study their local stability properties. Then we address the problem of controlling and stabilizing steady-states b...

Crystalline zinc tin oxide (ZTO; zinc oxide with heavy tin doping of 33 at.%) nanowires were first synthesized using the electrodeposition and heat treatment method based on an anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) membrane, which has an average diameter of about 60 nm. According to the field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) results, the synthesized ZTO nanowires are highly ordered and have...

Temperature measurement is critical for many technological applications and scientific experiments, and different types of thermometers have been developed to detect temperature at macroscopic length scales. However, quantitative measurement of the temperature of nanostructures remains a challenge. Here, we show a new type of microthermometer based on a vanadium dioxide nanowire. Its mechanism ...

Spintronic devices currently rely on magnetic switching or controlled motion of domain walls (DWs) by an external magnetic field or a spin-polarized current. Controlling the position of DW is essential for defining the state/information in a magnetic memory. During the process of nanowire fabrication, creating an off-set of two parts of the device could help to pin DW at a precise position. Mic...

We experimentally demonstrate that a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector is deterministically controllable by bright illumination. We found that bright light can temporarily make a large fraction of the nanowire length normally conductive, can extend deadtime after a normal photon detection, and can cause a hotspot formation during the deadtime with a highly nonlinear sensitivity. A...

A solid-state environmentally friendly Ag2S quantum dot-sensitized solar cell (QDSSC) is demonstrated. The photovoltaic device is fabricated by applying ZnO@Ag2S core-shell nanowire arrays (NWAs) as light absorbers and electron conductors, and poly-3-hexylthiophene (P3HT) as a solid-state hole conductor. Ag2S quantum dots (QDs) were directly grown on the ZnO nanowires by the successive ionic la...

A systematic study was conducted on the fabrication, structural characterization, and transport properties of Zn nanowires with diameters between 40 and 100 nm. Zinc nanowires were fabricated by electrodepositing Zn into commercially available polycarbonate (PC) or anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) membranes. By controlling the electrodeposition process, we found that the nanowires can be single-crys...

Silver nanowires 90 nm in diameter and 9 µm in length have been synthesized using different capping agents: polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) and alkyl thiol of different chain lengths. The nanowire structure is not influenced by the displacement of PVP by alkyl thiols, although alkyl thiols modify the lateral aggregation of nanowires. We examined the effect of the capping agent and the deposition me...