Perovskite oxide nanowires: synthesis, property and structural characterization.

Perovskite oxide materials display a wide spectrum of functional properties, including switchable polarization, piezoelectricity, pyroelectricity, and non-linear dielectric behavior. These properties are indispensable for application in electronic devices such as non-volatile memories, sensors, microactuators, infrared detectors, microwave phase filters, and so on. Recent advances in science and technology of perovskite oxide materials have resulted in the feature sizes of perovskite oxides-based electronic devices entering into nanoscale dimensions. At nanoscale perovskite oxide materials exhibit a pronounced size effect manifesting itself in a significant deviation of the properties of low-dimensional structures from the bulk and film counterparts. In the last decade low-dimensional perovskite nanosized oxides have been received much attention because of their superior physical and chemical properties. Among them, perovskite oxide nanowires are especially attractive for nanoscience studies and nanotechnology applications. Compared to other low-dimensional perovskite oxide systems, perovskite oxide nanowires are not only used as the building blocks of future nanodevices, but also they offer fundamental scientific opportunities for investigating the intrinsic size effects of physical properties. In the recent years, much progress has been made both in synthesis and physical property testing of perovskite oxide nanowires, which have a profound impact on the nanoelectronics. In this work, an overview of the state of art in perovskite oxide nanowires is presented, which covers their synthesis, property, and structural characterization. In the first part, the recent literatures for fabricating perovskite oxide nanowires with promising features, are critically reviewed. The second part deals with the recent advances on the physical property testing of perovskite oxide nanowires. The third part summarizes the recent progress on microstructural characterizations of perovskite oxide nanowires, to improve their crystalline quality, morphology and uniformity. Finally, this review concludes with some perspectives and outlook on the future developments of perovskite oxide nanowires.