| Electrochemical step-edge decoration is a technique for preparing nanowires that was developed in the Penner group in 2000. Here we discuss three improvements that we have been developed over the past three years. The first improvement is the addition of an electrooxidation step to reduce the diameter of as prepared nanowires. The second improvement is a modification of the electrodeposition from a constant potential to a potentiodynamic process, which allows us to prepare alloy nanowires, such as Bi2Te3, with a well defined stoichiometry. The third improvement is the patterning of step-edges via photolithography as a means to control the shape, size and placement of nanowires prepared by electrochemical step-edge decoration. |
