Utilizing Dog-Boning to Build up High-Aspect-Ratio Nanofences

The material built-up at sharp corners of a workpiece during electroplating, so-called dog-boning, was utilized for bottom-up creation of nanofences – free standing lines of high aspect ratio nanowires – on silicon oxide substrates. This was realized by electroplating gold into nanoporous aluminum oxide templates with underlying micropatterned gold pads, serving as working electrodes. Using the right parameter set, initial preferred nucleation at the gold pad rim site and the unique nanomatrix geometry led to the formation of lines of nanowires at the rim site separated by an adjacent depletion area from an extended bulk nanorod array region. It was found that the underlying mechanisms of this growth process are the increased electric field densities at the electrode edges and a field screening effect due to already grown neighboring wires, both identified by finite element electric field simulations, as well as the restricted diffusion dynamics of gold ions in the presence of nanopores. The obtained high aspect ratio nanofences might be applicable for enhanced catalysis, dielectric index sensing or in optical filters.