Researchers produce cheaper, ‘cooler’ semiconductor nanowires

Advances in nanowires may occur on a stunning regular basis at the present time, but this new development out of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems will have an extremely big impact on one all-important area: cost. As PhysOrg reports, manufacturing semiconducter nanowires at an industrial scale is currently very expensive because they have to be produced at extremely high temperatures (600 to 900 degrees Celsius), and the method used to fabricate them generally uses 24-karat gold as a catalyst, which obviously adds to the price. This new process, however, can use inexpensive materials like aluminum as a catalyst, and it is going to produce crystalline semiconductor nanowires at temperatures of just 150 degrees Celsius. Needless to say, that’s all still only being done within the lab at the present time, and there’s no indication as to when it’d actually be more familiar.