ABSTRACT
Nanoscale 1D and quasi-1D materials, such as wire, rods, belts, and tubes have stimulated great interest because of their importance in basic scientific research and potential technology applications.1 It is generally accepted that 1D nanostructures provide a good system to investigate the dependence of electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties on dimensionality and size reduction (or quantum confinement). Many unique and fascinating properties have been proposed and demonstrated for this class of materials, such as metal-insulator transition, superior mechanical roughness, higher luminescence efficiency, enhancement of thermoelectric figure of merit, lowered lasing threshold, size-dependent excitation or emission, quantized (or ballistic) conductance, Coulomb blockade (or single-electron tunneling, SET), etc.2-5 1D materials can also be used as both interconnects and functional units in fabricating electronic, optoelectronic, electrochemical, electromechanical, bioelectrical, and photonic crystal devices.1, 6-10 With the recent progress of 1D materials and devices, nanotechnology has become an exciting and rapidly expanding research area crossing the borders between the physical, chemical, life, and engineering sciences.
