Developing an efficient approach to fabricate electric contacts on nanowires

Nanostructured materials can have distinctive properties relative to their bulk materials. To determine the electrical properties of nanostructured materials it is important to be able to make electrical connection to these materials. However, the nanoscale dimensions of these materials demand techniques capable of accurate alignment of patterns to the features of the nanostructure. This thesis demonstrates the development of techniques to position metal electrodes onto nanowires to measure the conductivity of these materials. Two lithographic techniques for positioning electrodes on nanowires were newly developed: optical microscope projection photolithography and electron-beam lithography. Our time- and cost-effective optical lithographic approach allows the overlay of electrodes on nanostructures nearly a hundred times faster and a hundred times less costly than previous techniques. Also presented is a new approach to align patterns to single nanowires by electron-beam lithography. Preliminary studies on the electrical characterization of nanowires were also performed using these lithographically defined structures.