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It has been observed that wurtzite II-VI semiconducting nanobelts transform into single-crystal, periodically branched nanostructures upon heating. The mechanism of this novel transformation has been elucidated by heating II-VI nanobelts in an environmental transmission electron microscope (ETEM) in oxidizing, reducing, and inert atmospheres while observing their structural changes with high spatial resolution. The interplay of surface reconstruction of high-energy surfaces of the wurtzite phase and environment-dependent anisotropic chemical etching of certain crystal surfaces in the branching mechanism of nanobelts has been observed. Understanding of structural and chemical transformations of materials via in situ microscopy techniques and their role in designing new nanostructured materials is discussed.

High-quality, ordered nanopores in semiconductors are attractive for numerous biological, electrical, and optical applications. Here, GaN nanorods with continuous pores running axially through their centers were grown by organometallic vapor phase epitaxy. The porous nanorods nucleate on an underlying (0001)-oriented GaN film through openings in a SiN(x) template that are milled by a focused ion beam, allowing direct placement of porous nanorods. Nanopores with diameters ranging from 20-155 nm were synthesized with crystalline sidewalls.

A new synthetic strategy enabling highly controlled aqueous-phase palladium crystallization on the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) is demonstrated without the addition of external reducing agents. This low cost, solution processing method yields continuous and uniform coatings of polycrystalline palladium on TMV, creating highly uniform palladium nanowires of tens of nanometers in thickness and hundreds of nanometers in length. Our approach utilizes a palladium chloride precursor to produce metallic Pd coatings on TMV without the need for an external reducing agent. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and in situ transmission electron microscopy were used to confirm the reduction of the surface palladium oxide layer on the palladium metal wires during room temperature hydrogenation. This leads to metallic palladium nanowires with surfaces free of residual organics, making these structures suitable for applications in nanoscale electronics.

Dislocation filtering in GaN by selective area growth through a nanoporous template is examined both by transmission electron microscopy and numerical modeling. These nanorods grow epitaxially from the (0001)-oriented GaN underlayer through the approximately 100 nm thick template and naturally terminate with hexagonal pyramid-shaped caps. It is demonstrated that for a certain window of geometric parameters a threading dislocation growing within a GaN nanorod is likely to be excluded by the strong image forces of the nearby free surfaces. Approximately 3000 nanorods were examined in cross-section, including growth through 50 and 80 nm diameter pores. The very few threading dislocations not filtered by the template turn toward a free surface within the nanorod, exiting less than 50 nm past the base of the template. The potential active region for light-emitting diode devices based on these nanorods would have been entirely free of threading dislocations for all samples examined. A greater than 2 orders of magnitude reduction in threading dislocation density can be surmised from a data set of this size. A finite element-based implementation of the eigenstrain model was employed to corroborate the experimentally observed data and examine a larger range of potential nanorod geometries, providing a simple map of the different regimes of dislocation filtering for this class of GaN nanorods. These results indicate that nanostructured semiconductor materials are effective at eliminating deleterious extended defects, as necessary to enhance the optoelectronic performance and device lifetimes compared to conventional planar heterostructures.

We use real-time observations of the growth of copper-catalyzed silicon nanowires to determine the nanowire growth mechanism directly and to quantify the growth kinetics of individual wires. Nanowires were grown in a transmission electron microscope using chemical vapor deposition on a copper-coated Si substrate. We show that the initial reaction is the formation of a silicide, eta'-Cu(3)Si, and that this solid silicide remains on the wire tips during growth so that growth is by the vapor-solid-solid mechanism. Individual wire directions and growth rates are related to the details of orientation relation and catalyst shape, leading to a rich morphology compared to vapor-liquid-solid grown nanowires. Furthermore, growth occurs by ledge propagation at the silicide/silicon interface, and the ledge propagation kinetics suggest that the solubility of precursor atoms in the catalyst is small, which is relevant to the fabrication of abrupt heterojunctions in nanowires.

The Ostwald ripening behavior of Fe catalyst films deposited on thin alumina supporting layers is demonstrated as a function of thermal annealing in H2 and H2/H2O. The addition of H2O in super growth of single-walled carbon nanotube carpets is observed to inhibit Ostwald ripening due to the ability of oxygen and hydroxyl species to reduce diffusion rates of catalyst atoms. This work shows the impact of typical carpet growth environments on catalyst film evolution and the role Ostwald ripening may play in the termination of carpet growth.

The physics of adhesion and stiction of one-dimensional nanostructures such as nanotubes, nanowires, and biopolymers on different material substrates is of great interest for the study of biological adhesion and the development of nanoelectronics and nanocomposites. Here, we combine theoretical models and a new mode in the atomic force microscope to investigate quantitatively the physics of nanomechanical peeling of carbon nanotubes and nanocoils on different substrates. We demonstrate that when an initially straight nanotube is peeled from a surface, small perturbations can trigger sudden transitions between different geometric configurations of the nanotube with vastly different interfacial energies. This opens up the possibility of quantitative comparison and control of adhesion between nanotubes or nanowires on different substrates.