Nanowire

This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article. (February 2022)

Part of a series of articles on
Nanoelectronics
Single-molecule electronics
Molecular scale electronics Molecular logic gate Molecular wires
Solid-state nanoelectronics
Nanocircuitry Nanowires Nanolithography NEMS Nanosensor Moore's law Multigate device Semiconductor device fabrication List of semiconductor scale examples
Related approaches
Nanoionics Nanophotonics Nanomechanics
Portals
Electronics portal
v t e

A nanowire is a nanostructure in the form of a wire with the diameter of the order of a nanometre (10⁻⁹ metres). More generally, nanowires can be defined as structures that have a thickness or diameter constrained to tens of nanometers or less and an unconstrained length. At these scales, quantum mechanical effects are important—which coined the term "quantum wires".

Many different types of nanowires exist, including superconducting (e.g. YBCO^[2]), metallic (e.g. Ni, Pt, Au, Ag), semiconducting (e.g. silicon nanowires (SiNWs), InP, GaN) and insulating (e.g. SiO₂, TiO₂).

Molecular nanowires are composed of repeating molecular units either organic (e.g. DNA) or inorganic (e.g. Mo₆S_9−xI_x).