Combing non-epitaxially grown nanowires for large-area electronic devices

A facile route for aligning randomly oriented nanowires synthesized by a vapor-liquid-solid method for the fabrication of nanoelectronic devices was achieved using a polymer combing technique. By controlling the Young's modulus of the polymer combs, van der Waals interactions and shearing forces between the combs and nanowires can be manipulated and thus the nanowire density and alignment can be controlled. Using the proposed method, field-effect transistors were directly fabricated on as-grown substrates after aligning the nanowires, thereby demonstrating the feasibility of the scheme for the production of nanoelectronic devices.