A material's properties can dramatically change when you decrease its dimensions to the nanometer scale. Nanowires of different materials were prepared using Electrochemical Step Edge Decoration (ESED) onto highly-oriented pyrolitic graphite (HOPG). The main thrust of this work was the electrodeposition of metal structures onto HOPG. Metal nanowires and beaded metal nanowires were deposited using ESED. ESED is a illustrated as a general technique that can be used to deposit many different metals or semi-conductors onto HOPG. These nanowires could then be transferred off of the HOPG in a variety of ways onto silicon or into an insulating polymer. These transferred nanowires were robust and portable. Devices fabricated from these wires were subsequently operated as sensors of various types. Discussed in detail are Pd nanowire arrays operated as hydrogen sensors and Ag nanowire arrays operated as amine sensors. The novel sensing mechanisms for the devices were evaluated relative to their macroscale counterparts. Conductivity measurements on single nanowires were performed using conductive-tip atomic force microscopy (AFM).
