Morphology and structure evolution of metallic nanowire arrays prepared by die nanoimprinting

Metallic nanowire arrays (NWAs) possess wide application prospects due to their unique property, and the tailoring of NWAs' structure and morphology is of importance since it would significantly influence the performance of NWAs. In the present work, the morphology and structure evolution of the NWAs prepared by the newly developed die nanoimprinting technique has been investigated in detail. It was found that increasing processing temperature, time and pressure could increase the length of the nanowires and change the NWAs' morphology from monodispersed form to aggregated form. Increasing processing time and temperature within the supercooled liquid region would promote crystallization, while increasing processing pressure could suppress the crystallization. This work provided important insights into the structure and morphology evolution, and therefore, the tailoring of metallic NWAs prepared by die nanoimprinting through adjusting the process parameters.