Abstract
Nanoscience provides many strategies to construct high-performance materials and devices, including solar cells, thermoelectrics, sensors, transistors, and transparent electrodes. Bottom-up fabrication facilitates large-scale chemical synthesis without the need for patterning and etching processes that waste material and create surface defects. However, assembly and contacting procedures still require further development. Here, we demonstrate a light-induced plasmonic nanowelding technique to assemble metallic nanowires into large interconnected networks. The small gaps that form naturally at nanowire junctions enable effective light concentration and heating at the point where the wires need to be joined together. The extreme sensitivity of the heating efficiency on the junction geometry causes the welding process to self-limit when a physical connection between the wires is made. The localized nature of the heating prevents damage to low-thermal-budget substrates such as plastics and polymer solar cells. This work opens new avenues to control light, heat and mass transport at the nanoscale. © 2012 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 241-249 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Nature Materials |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 5 2012 |
Bibliographical note
KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01Acknowledged KAUST grant number(s): KUS-C1-015-21, KUS-I1-001-12
Acknowledgements: This publication was based on work supported by the Center for Advanced Molecular Photovoltaics (CAMP) (Award No KUS-C1-015-21), funded by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Y.C. acknowledges support from KAUST Investigator Award (No. KUS-I1-001-12). We gratefully acknowledge valuable discussions with P. Nordlander on the optical coupling of metallic nanostructures. E.C.G. acknowledges partial support from the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford University.