Electrical and optical properties of a single Sb2Se3 nanorod

In this paper we present the methods to chemically synthesize the Sb₂Se₃ nanorods and study the electrical and optical properties of a single Sb₂Se₃ nanorod with an average size of 70 nm in diameter and a length of about 1 μm to 2 μm. The techniques we devised can immobilize and allocate a single nano-object on an electron beam (E-beam) patterned smart substrate. It can also overcome the limitation of the spatial resolution of conventional optical techniques (∼ 1 mm) to obtain optical spectroscopy in an individual nano-object less than 100 nm in size. We also demonstrate the techniques in using E-beam defined metallic coordination markers as electrodes to measure the conductance of a single Sb₂Se₃ nanorod.