Bottom-up device fabrication via the seeded growth of polymer-based nanowires

The bottom-up assembly of nanoelectronic devices from molecular building blocks is a target of widespread interest. Herein we demonstrate an in situ seeded growth approach to produce a nanowire-based electrical device. This exploits the chemisorption of block terpolymer-based seed fibres with a thiophene-functionalised corona onto metal electrodes as the initial step. We then use these surface-bound seeds to initiate the growth of well-defined one-dimensional fibre-like micelles via the seeded growth method known as “Living crystallisation-driven self-assembly’’ and demonstrate that they are capable of spanning an interelectrode gap. Finally, a chemical oxidation step was used to transform the nanofibres into nanowires to generate a two-terminal device. This seeded growth approach of growing well-defined circuit elements provides a useful new design tool for bottom-up device fabrication.