Helical Growth of Ultrathin Gold–Copper Nanowires

In this work, we report the synthesis and detailed structural characterization of novel helical gold–copper nanowires. The nanowires possess the Boerdijk–Coxeter–Bernal structure, based on the pile up of octahedral, icosahedral, and/or decahedral seeds. They are self-assembled into a coiled manner as individual wires or into a parallel-ordering way as groups of wires. The helical nanowires are ultrathin with a diameter of less than 10 nm and variable length of several micrometers, presenting a high density of twin boundaries and stacking faults. To the best of our knowledge, such gold–copper nanowires have never been reported previously.