Electric-Field-Driven Accumulation and Alignment of CdSe and CdTe Nanorods in Nanoscale Devices

 These authors contributed equally to this work.

 To whom correspondence should be addressed:  E-mail:  drndic@ physics.upenn.edu; phone:  (215) 898-5810; fax:  (215) 898-2010.

Local electric fields generated by nanopatterned electrodes were used to control the position and orientation of well-isolated as well as closely packed colloidal semiconducting CdTe and CdSe nanorods (NRs) drop-cast from solution. Postdeposition imaging using transmission-electron microscopy and atomic-force microscopy revealed strong NR alignment to the direction of the applied field and dense accumulation around and onto voltage-biased electrodes when deposited from dilute and concentrated solutions, respectively. The degree of alignment under the applied electric field is characterized by a nematic order parameter S ≈ 0.8 in contrast to the zero-field case when S ≈ 0.1.

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