Seedless Growth of Free-Standing Copper Nanowires by Chemical Vapor Deposition

Free-standing copper nanowires were synthesized by a chemical vapor deposition process at low substrate temperatures using Cu(etac)[P(OEt)3]2 as a precursor. The process requires neither templates nor catalysts to produce copper nanowires of 70-100 nm in diameter, which exhibited high purity and crystallinity with [111] orientation. The grain structures of the films deposited from a series of Cu(I) alkyl 3-oxobutanoate complexes indicated that the high precursor stability was responsible for the columnar growth of the grains, which was evolved to the nanowires eventually.