The institute
FEMTO's news

You are here

Polymer-based nanowires

Molecules, salt and light :  an easy recipe to provide giant nanowires !

On-surface polymerization of organic precursors provides new possibilities to form highly-stable and atomically-defined nanostructures with desired properties. As emphasized by the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2016, awarded for early work in understanding topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter, the formation of artificial matter exhibiting properties controlled by their symmetry is very promising in nanoelectronics. This issue has been addressed by many research groups who performed on-surface reactions under ultra-high vacuum (UHV) conditions and on atomically clean single-crystal metal substrates. In this solvent-free environment, classical chemical reactions such as Ullmann type coupling, Glaser coupling, and many more have successfully been used to create well-defined and covalently bound organic 1D and 2D structures with dimensions of about 100 nm. However, for the basic building blocks of molecular circuitry to interconnect active devices there is a need to fabricate isolated nanowires with a length larger than 1 μm.

Other than length, the main limitations of structures fabricated to date for use in future nanoscale electronic and optical devices are (i) the use of metal substrates (for instance, leading to non-radiative quenching), (ii) the high number of defects in the formed covalent structures, and (iii) the side-products of some reactions that might remain on the substrate surface. This is why in our work, published in Nature Chemistry,  we overcome these identified obstacles by using a side product-free 1D polymerization on an alkali-halide surface. This new concept is driven by light-induced radical polymerization, a classic chemical reaction pathway, but one which has never been transferred onto the surface of bulk insulators so far. 

Noncontact atomic force microscopy was used to evaluate the geometrical structure of the fibres formed on the KCl substrate and to test both their mechanical and thermal stability. A deeper insight into the reaction mechanism and the energy barriers involved is obtained by comparing the experimental observations with calculations, which revealed the strong localization of the active biradicals at the fibre ends.

We hope that with our work we will ‘initiate’ a completely new way to synthesize organic compounds on surfaces, especially on insulating substrates.

Contact : Frédéric Chérioux

Link

  • Daniel BRUNNER winner of an ERC Consolidator grant 2021

    Daniel BRUNNER is a CNRS researcher at the FEMTO-ST Institute and has been awarded a prestigious European Research Council Cosolidator Grant of 2M € for his INSPIRE project

    Read more
  • Daniel HISSEL awarded as « Fellow » of the IEEE society

    Professor in Electrical Engineering at the University of Franche-Comté and researcher at FEMTO-ST, Daniel Hissel has been awarded as  for his work on hydrogen systems.

    Read more
  • March 8, International Women's Day

    "Freedom, like Science, and Women's Rights, are fundamental issues for Humanity."

    FEMTO-ST chooses to display on this day of March 8 (also charged with the serious news of the war in Ukraine), its commitment to each of these three issues.

    Read more
  • First experimental observation of the roton effect in metamaterials

    Experiments conducted jointly by FEMTO-ST and KIT demonstrate the control of forward and backward wave propagation by adjusting the frequency.

    Read more
  • FEMTO-ST partner of the Joint Technology Unit "CAPPLAI"

    For the development of sensors to control and optimize the performance of dairy processes.                                                                                     

    Read more
  • Happy new year 2022 !

    The Management and all the members of FEMTO-ST wish you a year 2022 full of personal and professional satisfactions

    Read more
  • Safa MERAGHNI receives the PEPITE prize in the regional "Female Initiative " competition

    Her project is to create a "Smart Medical Assistant" which is an intelligent medical assistance device on a smartphone designed to help doctors in their diagnosis.

    Read more
  • IEEE ICEMS Conference : Best paper award

    Researchers from SHARPAC team/ENERGY department of FEMTO-ST institute received the Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Electrical Machines and Systems for their work on the influence of electrical conductivity on eddy-current losses in electrical machines.

    Read more
  • Joint laboratories CNRS-Companies 2021

    FEMTO-ST and AUREA Technology honored at the LAB COM CNRS event in Paris on November 29 and 30

    Read more
  • Nanorobotics of the future: FEMTO-ST enters the 4th dimension

    For the first time, nanorobotic structures have been realized by folding in 3 dimensions a multilayer membrane and proposing their actuation by an electro-thermo mechanical principle.

    Read more

Pages