In my presentation, I will discuss several examples of uniquely plasma-enabled nanomaterials for applications in energy conversion and storage, sensing, opto- and nanoelectronics. The first example shows a simple, uniquely plasma-enabled and environment-friendly process to reduce the thickness of vertically standing graphenes to only 4–5 graphene layers and arranging them in dense, ultra-large surface area, ultra-open-edge-length, self-organized and interconnected networks. The approach for the ultimate thickness reduction to 1–2 graphene layers is also discussed. The vertical graphene networks are optically transparent and show tunable electric properties from semiconducting to semi-metallic and metallic at room and near-room temperatures thus recovering semimetallic properties of a single-layer graphene. In the second example, a simple, rapid, catalyst-free synthesis of complex patterns of long, vertically aligned multiwalled carbon nanotubes, strictly confined within mechanically-written features on a silicon surface is presented. It is shown that dense arrays of the nanotubes can nucleate and fully fill the features when the low-temperature microwave plasma is in a direct contact with the surface. This eliminates additional nanofabrication steps and inevitable contact losses in applications associated with carbon nanotube patterns. Our results contribute to enabling direct integration of graphene structures into presently dominant Si-based nanofabrication platform for next-generation nanoelectronic, sensor, biomedical, and optoelectronic components and nanodevices. It will also be discussed how low-temperature plasma-specific effects contribute to the solution of (i) effective control of nucleation and growth; (ii) environmental friendliness; and (iii) energy efficiency critical issues in semiconducting nanowire growth.
Bio-summary: Professor Kostya (Ken) Ostrikov is a CEO Science Leader, Australian Future Fellow (FT3, Nanotechnology as the primary field of research), and a Founding Leader of the Plasma Nanoscience Center Australia at CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering as well as an Honorary Professor and Research Program Leader of the Center for Waves and Complex Systems of the University of Sydney. As a leader of a large international collaborative network, convenor of annual conferences, and lead editor of special issues in the field, he leads a large international plasma nanoscience community. His achievements include 3 most prestigious general-field (physics) medals of National Academies of Science of Australia and Ukraine and the Australian Institute of Physics, including AIP Walter Boas (2010) and AAS Pawsey (2008) medals, 7 prestigious international fellowships and 8 full professor-level appointments in 6 countries, 3 research monographs, more than 300 refereed journal papers, more than 85 plenary, keynote, and invited talks at international conferences, research training of 23 researchers with PhD and 55 research students, as well as more than $10 Million in competitive research funding and more than 100 collaborators in last 6 years. He was the only Australian author in the Rev. Mod. Phys. in the 8 years before 2005. His main research program on nanoscale control of energy and matter for a sustainable future contributes to the solution of the grand and as-yet-unresolved challenge of directing energy and matter at the nanoscale, a challenge that is critical for renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies for a sustainable future.