Metal Wire

Metal Wire List

Metal wire is a new kind of one-dimensional nanomaterial. In one-dimensional direction, the size of metal wire is between 1 nm and 100 nm. Due to the size of metal wires is in the nanoscale, they show many special effects that different from macroscopic metal or single metal atom, such as small size effect, interface effect, quantum size effect, macroscopic quantum tunneling effect and dielectric limited domain effect. With the advantages of unique physical and chemical properties, metal wires have great application potential in many fields and they are a research hotpot recently.

Applications:

• Catalysis field: Metal wires with uniform size and high aspect ratio generally have high catalytic properties, and they can be widely used in the field of catalysis. As catalysts, metal wires can be used in electrocatalytic oxygen reduction reactions, catalytic electrodes for lithium oxide batteries and the others, which can greatly improve the reaction efficiency.

Figure 1. An example of metal wires applied in catalysis field.

• Optical field: Some metal wires have excellent photoelectric properties and they have important applications in the photoelectric field. After being modified by doping, metal wires can be used as important electrode materials for solar cells, light-emitting diodes and the others.

Figure 2. An example of metal wires applied in solar cells.

• Sensors field: Metal wires have a wide range of applications in the sensors field, which can be used to prepare pressure sensors, gas sensors and the others. For example, the resistivity of some metal wires varies with the type and concentration of adsorbed gases on the surface, making them ideal gas-sensitive materials. The gas sensors designed based on metal wires can realize the detection of harmful gas, combustible gas, organic vapor and the others.
• The others: In addition to the above fields, metal wires have been widely used in other fields, such as electronics, magnetics and the others.

Classification:

According to the composition, metal wires can be divided into the following categories.

• Copper wires: Copper wires have a large specific surface area. In addition, the number of surface atoms, surface energy and surface tension increase sharply with the decrease of the size, which shows some unique physical properties. These properties of copper wires may have very important value in practical applications.
• Zinc wires: Zinc wires are important energy materials and can be used in the manufacture of various batteries. In addition, zinc wires are good superconductors. When the diameter of zinc wires is below 70 nm, the superconductivity varies with the diameter. Moreover, zinc wires can also be used as a precursor for other zinc-based semiconductor materials.
• Silver wires: Silver wires are widely used in catalysts, surface enhanced Raman scattering, microelectronics, thin-film solar cells, microelectrodes and biosensors due to their excellent conductivity, heat transfer, low surface resistance, high transparency and good biocompatibility.
• The others: In addition to the above, there are many kinds of nanowires, including platinum nanowires, gold nanowires, cobalt nanowires and the others.

References

1. Heng‐Pan, Yang, Han‐Wen, et al.. Corrigendum: A Core–Shell‐Structured Silver Nanowire/Nitrogen‐Doped Carbon Catalyst for Enhanced and Multifunctional Electrofixation of CO2[J]. Chemsuschem, 2019.
2. Im H G, Jeong S, Jin J, et al. Hybrid crystalline-ITO/metal nanowire mesh transparent electrodes and their application for highly flexible perovskite solar cells[J]. Npg Asia Materials, 2016, 8(6): 282.