Indium oxide nanospirals made of kinked nanowires.

Helical inorganic nanostructures have received great attention due to their unique structures that could be interesting for both fundamental research and nanodevice applications. Using a tube-in-tube laser ablation chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method with gold nanoparticles as the catalysts, we reported the synthesis of self-assembled kinked In2O3 nanospirals and multikinked nanowires. As-synthesized nanostructures showed ultrafast photoinduced reversible wettability switching behavior from hydrophobic (132.7°) to superhydrophilic (0°) within 14 min. Single kinked In2O3 nanostructure-based field-effect transistors were fabricated, and mobilities higher than 200 cm2/(V·s) were obtained, revealing good opportunity in fabricating high-performance electronic and optoelectronic devices.