Electric-field assisted assembly and alignment of metallic nanowires

This letter describes an electric-field assisted assembly technique used to position individual nanowires suspended in a dielectric medium between two electrodes defined lithographically on a ${\mathrm{SiO}}_{\mathrm{2}}$ substrate. During the assembly process, the forces that induce alignment are a result of nanowire polarization in the applied alternating electric field. This alignment approach has facilitated rapid electrical characterization of 350- and 70-nm-diameter Au nanowires, which had room-temperature resistivities of approximately 2.9 and ${\text{4.5×10}}^{\text{−6}}\mathrm{ \Omega }\mathrm{cm}.$