Hwang Injoo, Guan Zeyi, Cao Chezheng, Tang Wenliang, Chui Chi On, Li Xiaochun
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Division of Mechanical Convergence Engineering, Silla University, Busan, Republic of Korea.
Nat Commun. 2020 Nov 23;11(1):5932. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-19796-5.
Ultra-long metal nanowires and their facile fabrication have been long sought after as they promise to offer substantial improvements of performance in numerous applications. However, ultra-long metal ultrafine/nanowires are beyond the capability of current manufacturing techniques, which impose limitations on their size and aspect ratio. Here we show that the limitations imposed by fluid instabilities with thermally drawn nanowires can be alleviated by adding tungsten carbide nanoparticles to the metal core to arrive at wire lengths more than 30 cm with diameters as low as 170 nm. The nanoparticles support thermal drawing in two ways, by increasing the viscosity of the metal and lowering the interfacial energy between the boron silicate and zinc phase. This mechanism of suppressing fluid instability by nanoparticles not only enables a scalable production of ultralong metal nanowires, but also serves for widespread applications in other fluid-related fields.
超长金属纳米线及其简便制造方法长期以来一直备受追捧，因为它们有望在众多应用中大幅提升性能。然而，超长金属超细/纳米线超出了当前制造技术的能力范围，这些技术对其尺寸和纵横比施加了限制。在此，我们表明，通过向金属芯中添加碳化钨纳米颗粒，可以减轻热拉伸纳米线中流体不稳定性所带来的限制，从而获得长度超过30厘米、直径低至170纳米的金属线。纳米颗粒通过两种方式支持热拉伸，一是增加金属的粘度，二是降低硼硅酸盐与锌相之间的界面能。这种通过纳米颗粒抑制流体不稳定性的机制不仅能够实现超长金属纳米线的规模化生产，还可应用于其他与流体相关的广泛领域。
