Striped metal nanowires as building blocks and optical tags

Sequential electrodeposition within a porous template can be used to prepare striped nanowires with tailorable dimensions and composition. Variations in composition along the length of the wire can be used to incorporate electrical functionality, optical contrast, and/or desired surface chemistry. Nanowires can be functionalized with chemical or biochemical reagents appropriate for assembly or biosensing. Therefore, these particles are interesting as building blocks for nanoscale electronics and as barcodes for both biological and non-biological tagging applications. In this article, we briefly discuss the synthesis and optical readout of striped metal nanowires, as well as progress towards each of these potential applications.