Direct Assembly of Large Arrays of Oriented Conducting Polymer Nanowires

Although oriented carbon nanotubes, oriented nanowires of metals, semiconductors and oxides have attracted wide attention, there have been few reports on oriented polymer nanostructures such as nanowires. In this paper we report the assembly of large arrays of oriented nanowires through controlled nucleation and growth during a stepwise electrochemical deposition process in which a large number of nuclei were first deposited on the substrate using a large current density. After the initial nucleation, the current density was reduced step by step to grow the oriented nanowires from the nucleation sites created in the first step. A very different morphology was also demonstrated by first depositing a monolayer of close-packed colloidal spheres using a similar step-wise deposition process. As a result, the polymer nanofibers grew from the spheres in a radial fashion and formed the continuous three-dimensional network of nanofibers in the film. The principles of control nucleation and growth in electrochemical deposition investigated in this paper should be applicable to other electrical conducting and electrochemical active materials, including metals and conducting oxides. We also hope the oriented electroactive polymer nanostructure will open the door for new applications, such as miniaturized biosensors.