Nano Wires / Nano Rods

Nickel Nanowire is defined as any solid material in the form of wire with diameter 10-100nm. These wires can be categorized by the material like metal nanowires, semi conductor nanowires, oxide nanowires, multi segment nanowires.  Nickel Nanowires are promising materials for many novel applications because of their unique properties including electrical properties, optical properties, thermal properties and mechanical properties.

The unique combination of magnetic, transport and structural properties of  Nickel nanowires, they are in focus of many scientific groups as potential candidates for applications in microwave electronics as tunable planar devices for very high frequencies, patterned magnetic recording media and biomedical sensors for cancer treatments. Shape anisotropy of magnetic or nickel nanowires orients the magnetic moments along the Nanowires longitudinal axes forming a high density perpendicular magnetic recording media with small switching fields and high thermal stability. Due to the magnetic properties of Nickel Nanowires they are also known as Ferromagnetic Nanowires.

There are few techniques for wire nanopattering, such as focused ion beam, electron-beam lithography and vapor-liquid-solid technique, but the most promising technique to fabricate highly-ordered magnetic nanowires arrays is porous-alumina template electrode deposition. Electrode deposition into nanoporous templates is cost-effective and suitable for array fabrication over square centimeters. Usually the pores have excellent short-range ordered structure and the pore diameter (normally, ranging between 10 and 200 nm) and length (from a few μm to ~100-150 μm) can be readily controlled.

Physical and chemical properties of nanostructures were significantly affected by the morphology of nanowires; extensive researches are being conducted to afford morphological control of nanowires during synthesis.  Template synthesis is the most commonly used method for synthesizing nanowires due to its versatility in controlling of the growth and dimension of nanowires. The template synthesis method has been used to prepare nickel nanowires of regular and controllable rod sizes. However, template synthesis is not cost-effective and unsuitable for large scale production.

Using electrodes made from Nickel Nanowires would enable flat panel displays to be flexible as well as thinner than current flat panel displays. Nanowires are used to build transistors without p-n junctions. The nanowires made from an alloy of iron and nickels are used to create dense memory devices. Due to magnetic properties of nickel nanowires, they can be used in memories where by applying current in the magnetized section along the length of the wire, the magnetism move along the wire which can be read by a stationary sensors.