Nanomolding of topological nanowires

Abstract

For more than a decade since their experimental confirmation, topological materials have elicited interest from a wide variety of fields due to their unique symmetry-protected electronic states. Given a large number of theoretically predicted topological materials, new strategies are needed to fabricate topological nanomaterials in a high throughput manner in order to identify promising topological candidates for use in functional devices. In this Perspective, we discuss the use of nanomolding to fabricate topological nanowires; nanomolding is a scalable fabrication process in which a bulk polycrystalline feedstock is pressed into a nanostructured mold at an elevated temperature to form nanowires. Unlike traditional top-down and bottom-up fabrication methods, nanomolding requires minimal optimization of experimental parameters and can work on a wide variety of topological compounds, thus enabling high throughput fabrication of topological nanowires. The fabricated nanowires are single crystalline and defect-free and can have high aspect ratios greater than 1000. We also discuss how future developments in nanomolding can lead to new heterostructures, such as superconductor/semiconductor hybrid nanowires, and other nanomaterial shapes, such as plates or ribbons.