Hard-to-stretch silicon becomes superelastic

As a hard and brittle material, silicon has practically no natural elasticity. But in a new study, researchers have demonstrated that amorphous silicon can be grown into superelastic horseshoe-shaped nanowires that can undergo ...

Optical metacage blocks light from entering or escaping

(Phys.org)—Physicists have built a nanowire cage that blocks one or more wavelengths of light from either entering or escaping, yet allows liquids and gases to pass through the small gaps between the nanowires. The "optical ...

page 1 from 40

Nanowire

A nanowire is a nanostructure, with the diameter of the order of a nanometer (10−9 meters). Alternatively, nanowires can be defined as structures that have a thickness or diameter constrained to tens of nanometers or less and an unconstrained length. At these scales, quantum mechanical effects are important — hence such wires are also known as "quantum wires". Many different types of nanowires exist, including metallic (e.g., Ni, Pt, Au), semiconducting (e.g., Si, InP, GaN, etc.), and insulating (e.g., SiO2,TiO2). Molecular nanowires are composed of repeating molecular units either organic (e.g. DNA) or inorganic (e.g. Mo6S9-xIx).

The nanowires could be used, in the near future, to link tiny components into extremely small circuits. Using nanotechnology, such components could be created out of chemical compounds.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA