A.W. Maijenburg

Dielectrophoretic alignment of metal and metal oxide nanowires and nanotubes: A universal set of parameters for bridging prepatterned microelectrodes

Nanowires and nanotubes were synthesized from metals and metal oxides using templated cathodic electrodeposition. With templated electrodeposition, small structures are electrodeposited using a template that is the inverse of the final desired shape. Dielectrophoresis was used for the alignment of the as-formed nanowires and nanotubes between prepatterned electrodes. For reproducible nanowire alignment, a universal set of dielectrophoresis parameters to align any arbitrary nanowire material was determined. The parameters include peak-to-peak potential and frequency, thickness of the silicon oxide layer, grounding of the silicon substrate, and nature of the solvent medium used. It involves applying a field with a frequency >10(5) Hz, an insulating silicon oxide layer with a thickness of 2.5 μm or more, grounding of the underlying silicon substrate, and the use of a solvent medium with a low dielectric constant. In our experiments, we obtained good results by using a peak-to-peak potential of 2.1 V at a frequency of 1.2 × 10(5) Hz. Furthermore, an indirect alignment technique is proposed that prevents short circuiting of nanowires after contacting both electrodes. After alignment, a considerably lower resistivity was found for ZnO nanowires made by templated electrodeposition (2.2-3.4 × 10(-3) Ωm) compared to ZnO nanorods synthesized by electrodeposition (10 Ωm) or molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) (500 Ωm).

MoS2 Nanocube structures as catalysts for electrochemical H2 evolution from acidic aqueous solutions

Core-shell PMMA-Au nanocube structures made by a combination of nanoimprint lithography and sidewall deposition were used as template for electrodeposition of MoS2, Ni, and Pt. Linear sweep voltammetry experiments obtained in an aqueous solution containing 0.29 M H2SO4 (pH 0.24) showed that the onset potential of the core-shell-shell PMMA-Au-MoS2 nanocube electrode for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) was shifted to the positive direction (i.e., requiring a lower overpotential) by 20-40 mV compared to planar MoS2 films. This indicates that the nanocube electrodes have a significantly increased HER activity, which is probably because of a higher density of catalytically active edge sites available at the nanocube surface. It was also found that the HER activity initially increased with increasing MoS2 deposition time, but decreased after deposition for 60 min because the edges of the nanocubes became rounded, thereby decreasing the number of active edge sites. By depositing Ni and Pt on top of PMMA-Au nanocubes, it was shown that this method can also be used for the synthesis of nanocube structures with varying compositions.