Alignment, Electronic Properties, Doping, and On-Chip Growth of Colloidal PbSe Nanowires

Abstract

Single-crystalline straight, zigzag, helical, and branched nanowires can be synthesized by oriented attachment of PbSe nanocrystals followed by their fusion in the presence of different surfactants. These colloidal nanowires can be aligned in external electrical fields, facilitating their integration into electronic circuits. We show how the nanowire morphology affects the interaction of nanowires with the electric field. Conducting PbSe nanowires can be assembled from nanocrystal building blocks directly on a chip, growing along the electric field. As-formed PbSe nanowires show a p-type conduction that can be switched to an n-type by charge-transfer doping of the nanowires with hydrazine. In this work, we demonstrate strategies for device integration of solution-phase synthesized semiconductor nanowires and explore their electronic properties.