Background Information on Nickel

Background Information on Nickel

Nano wires can be made out of many different matierals to fit the specific need of the scientist. They can be made out of alloys, elements, oxides, and other materials. Additionally, they can be tailors to fit specific geometric requirements. In the semiconductor industry, when the demand for transistors is extremely high, many elements are experimented with. As time goes on, and technology advances, more and more objects can be put onto a substrate.

A very common element that nanowires are being created and researched with is Nickel. Nickel’s use in the construction and application of nanowires has received a lot of attention from the scientific community over the last couple years due to its unique growth technique, its physical and chemical properties, and the applications that it can serve to field of science and electronics.

Nickel is element number 28 on the periodic table of elements. It is part of the transition metals and it a ductile and dense metal. It is a silver colored metal found in the earth’s crust. Nickel is one of the four elements that exhibit properties of magnetism, the others being iron, cobalt, and gadolinium. By nature it is a conductive material because it is a metal. Its physical structure is a face centered cube, which is important to understand when trying to find out its behavior in structural recombination and lattice binding. Depending on the crystal orientation of a material, it will combine to make differently oriented lattices. Nickel also has the potential to be a colloid when introduce into a solution in small particles. This means that it can scatter light into different patterns depending on its formation. Combining all of these unique trait...

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...ly, the wavelength of the laser source will also determine how severe the scattering of the light is. The scientists also determined that there is a very big difference in the colloidal scattering depending on what type of solution is used. The results show that nanowires suspended in glycerol are the most stable and maintain a high amount of reliability. This solution can move light in many directions depending on the field applied. However, one drawback to this application is that it takes multiple hours to achieve a significant shift in light because of the nanowires reconfiguration, in the solution.

Nickel nanowires are not only limited to the electro-optical field. Recently Nickel nanowires have received a lot of attention from the bio-medical science community for their imaging assisting properties and carrier properties.