Shape stabilisation of ultrathin nanowires by core material, ligand shell, and environment

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Ultrathin nanowires of metals and semiconductors with diameters of only few tens of atoms can be produced using modern chemical syntheses. They are interesting building blocks for novel materials and devices, but tend to change shape. The nanowires spontaneously decay into spheres of equal volume, thus reducing their surface area. This "Rayleigh Plateau instability" is apparently suppressed by the organic shells that form around the inorganic core during chemical synthesis. We investigate the stabilization mechanism experimentally and compare nanowires of gold and of bismuth sulfide, which we can prepare with very similar geometry. The goal is to understand the stabilization and decay mechanisms and to investigate the influence of the core material, the molecular structure of the ligand shell, and the solvent.