Production of ultrathin nanowires from refractory metals (Nb, Re, W, Mo) by laser ablation in superfluid helium

The ablation of targets in superfluid helium with a short-pulse laser allows introducing into liquid the atoms and small clusters of any metal. The metal is then concentrated in the core of 1D quantized vortices nucleating in the laser focus and expanding into the liquid. Subsequent metal coagulation within the vortex results in the formation of thin nanowires with perfect shape and structure. For refractory metals these wires are expected to be especially thin. The diameters of nanowires grown from niobium, molybdenum and tungsten are indeed 4.0, 2.0 and 2.5 nm, respectively. Unfortunately, under ablation of unannealed rhenium the main product is flat ‘flakes’ having irregular shape and 20-50 nm size. Short nanowires (with a 1.5 nm diameter) were present in small amounts.

The wires produced by this method contain no additional impurities and have a free lateral surface. By using a diode-pumped Nd:LSB microlaser (1.06 μm wavelength, 0.4 ns pulse duration, 100 μJ pulse energy and 4 kHz repetition rate) the amounts of nanoweb sufficient for many physical and chemical applications could be produced in a single low-temperature experiment. Ultrathin wires of molybdenum and tungsten show promise for creating ‘cold’ cathodes whereas a niobium nanoweb should be an excellent catalyst.