Researchers coax gold into nanowires
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - 16:30
in Physics & Chemistry
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have coaxed gold into nanowires as a way of creating an inexpensive material for detecting poisonous gases found in natural gas. Along with colleagues at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), Alexander Star, associate professor of chemistry in Pitt's Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences and principal investigator of the research project, developed a self-assembly method that uses scaffolds (a structure used to hold up or support another material) to grow gold nanowires. Their findings, titled "Welding of Gold Nanoparticles on Graphitic Templates for Chemical Sensing," were published online Jan. 22 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.