Metal Octaethylporphyrin Nanowire Array and Network toward Electric/Photoelectric Devices

A vapor transfer deposition method was developed to fabricate metal (metal = Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Mg) octaethylporphyrin (MOEP) nanowire arrays in large area on a variety of substrates. The formation process of MOEP nanowire arrays was investigated by time-dependently terminating deposition at various stages, based on which, a vaporization-condensation-recrystallization (VCR) mechanism was proposed to understand the formation of nanowires and thus guide the synthesis of three-dimensional (3D) sea urchin-like nanowire assemblies and two-dimensional (2D) nanowire networks. As application examples of these porphyrin nanostructures, the porphyrin nanowires demonstrated a good field emission property and the photoelectric device based on the 2D MOEP nanowire network was fabricated, showing a good light-induced signal amplification behavior.