Continuous-feed nanocasting process for the synthesis of bismuth nanowire composites

TL;DR

This paper introduces a continuous-feed nanocasting method to synthesize bismuth nanowire composites within mesoporous silica, demonstrating electrical properties influenced by size effects.

Contribution

A novel continuous-feed nanocasting process for embedding bismuth nanowires in silica, enabling scalable synthesis of conductive nanocomposites with size-dependent electrical properties.

Findings

Successful synthesis of bismuth nanowire composites within silica

Electrical resistivity shows size-quantization effects

Process enables scalable production of nanowire composites

Abstract

We present a novel, continuous-feed nanocasting procedure for the synthesis of bismuth nanowire structures embedded in the pores of a mesoporous silica template. The immobilization of a bismuth salt inside the silica template from a diluted metal salt solution yields a sufficiently high loading to obtain electrically conducting bulk nanowire composite samples after reduction and sintering the nanocomposite powders. Electrical resistivity measurements of sintered bismuth nanowires embedded in the silica template reveal size-quantization effects.