Conductive Nanowires Templated by Molecular Brushes

In this paper, we report the fabrication of conductive nanowires using polymer bottle brushes as templates. In our approach, we synthesized poly(2-dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate methyl iodide quaternary salt brushes by two-step atom transfer radical polymerization, loaded them with palladium salt, and reduced them in order to form metallic nanowires with average lengths and widths of 300 and 20 nm, respectively. The obtained nanowires were deposited between conductive gold pads and were connected to them by sputtering of additional pads to form an electric circuit. We connected the nanowires in an electric circuit and demonstrated that the conductivity of these nanowires is around 100 S·m(-1).