Electrical Characterization of Bio-Templated Nanowires

There has been increasing interest in the development and production of nanoscale structures, and recent research efforts have made many advances. However, minor complications of current fabrication technologies have motivated a new and promising technology which is the use of biological materials as templates for nanowires. The use of bio-templated nanowires offers potentially enormous advantages of highly selective attachment (i.e. self-assembly) to nanoelectric structures. The characterization of wire resistivity of bio-templated nanowires such as the Microtuble-templated and Phage-templated metal nanowires, is very critical to asses the nature of the contact resistance of nanowires to nanostructured devices. The use of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) as well as Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) techniques will allow for the characterization of wire structure as well as metal particle coverage which will then be correlated with related electrical data.