Date of Award

2010

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Mechanical Engineering

First Advisor

Kumar, Dhananjay Dr.

Abstract

Nanowires have attracted wide-spread attention from researchers around the world due to their enormous potential for basic studies and applications in materials and biological science and engineering. In this work, titanium nitride nanowires have been grown on a magnesium oxide substrate using a pulsed laser deposition technique. The selection of titanium nitride as a material of interest has been made due to its stellar properties of high melting point, good diffusion barrier, high hardness, good electrical conductivity, and scattered reports in the literature about its biocompatibility. In this work, gold has been used as a catalyst. The most critical parameters for titanium nitride nanowire growth are the size of the gold catalyst and the substrate temperature. Before all the deposition experiments, thermal annealing of the substrate has been carried out, which affects the morphology of the final structures of titanium nitride nanowires. The morphology of the titanium nitride nanowires has been characterized by scanning electron microscopy. X-ray diffraction has been used to determine the crystalline structure and orientation of titanium nitride nanowires. The effect of substrate orientation, deposition temperature, and the nature and pressure of background gas on nanowire growth has also been examined in this study. The corrosion and biological behavior of titanium nitride nanowires investigated in this ` xii study suggest that it is a biocompatible material and can safely be used in biological applications.

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