Nanowire

A nanowire is a nanostructure, with the diameter of the order of a nanometer (10⁻⁹ meters). It can also be defined as the ratio of the length to width being greater than 1000. Alternatively, nanowires can be defined as structures that have a thickness or diameter constrained to tens of nanometers or less and an unconstrained length. At these scales, quantum mechanical effects are important — which coined the term "quantum wires". Many different types of nanowires exist, including superconducting (e.g. YBCO), metallic (e.g. Ni, Pt, Au), semiconducting (e.g. silicon nanowires (SiNWs), InP, GaN) and insulating (e.g. SiO₂, TiO₂). Molecular nanowires are composed of repeating molecular units either organic (e.g. DNA) or inorganic (e.g. Mo₆S_9−xI_x).

Typical nanowires exhibit aspect ratios (length-to-width ratio) of 1000 or more. As such they are often referred to as one-dimensional (1-D) materials. Nanowires have many interesting properties that are not seen in bulk or 3-D (three-dimensional) materials. This is because electrons in nanowires are quantum confined laterally and thus occupy energy levels that are different from the traditional continuum of energy levels or bands found in bulk materials.

Peculiar features of this quantum confinement exhibited by certain nanowires manifest themselves in discrete values of the electrical conductance. Such discrete values arise from a quantum mechanical restraint on the number of electrons that can travel through the wire at the nanometer scale. These discrete values are often referred to as the quantum of conductance and are integer multiples of

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