Review on measurement techniques of transport properties of nanowires

Physical properties at the nanoscale are novel and different from those in bulk materials. Over the last few decades, there has been an ever growing interest in the fabrication of nanowire structures for a wide variety of applications including energy generation purposes. Nevertheless, the study of their transport properties, such as thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity or Seebeck coefficient, remains an experimental challenge. For instance, in the particular case of nanostructured thermoelectrics, theoretical calculations have shown that nanowires offer a promising way of enhancing the hitherto low efficiency of these materials in the conversion of temperature differences into electricity. Therefore, within the thermoelectrical community there has been a great experimental effort in the measurement of these quantities in actual nanowires. The measurements of these properties at the nanoscale are also of interest in fields other than energy, such as electrical components for microchips, field effect transistors, sensors, and other low scale devices. For all these applications, knowing the transport properties is mandatory. This review deals with the latest techniques developed to perform the measurement of these transport properties in nanowires. A thorough overview of the most important and modern techniques used for the characterization of different kinds of nanowires will be shown. © 2013 The Royal Society of Chemistry.This work has been supported by ERC Starting Grant Nano-TEC number 240497, Nanotherm Consolider CSD-2010-00044 project and PHOMENTA project MAT2011-27911. MM and OC wish to acknowledge CSIC and the European Social Fund for financial support by JAE-Pre and JAE-Doc. JRV and AFL acknowledge financial support from Generalitat de Catalunya through Grant SGR2009-01225 and from Marie Curie European Reintegration Grant within the 7th European Community Framework Programme.We also acknowledge institutional support from the Unit of Information Resources for Research at the "Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas" (CSIC) for the article-processing charges contribution.Peer Reviewe