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. 2016 Mar 3;6:22524. doi: 10.1038/srep22524

Figure 1. Single step formation.

Figure 1

(A) The smooth precursor remains stable when the beam is spread out. (B) The precursor transforms near instantly as one diminishes the beam waist once the reaction current density threshold is reached. Typically, the transformation occurs when the diameter of the beam waist is slightly larger than that of the precursor specimen under investigation. After the reaction a large number of NWs stick out of the precursor pointing in all directions, in addition, there is a sizeable volume loss in the precursor. (C) The yield and aspect ratio of the NWs from a single precursor can be maximized by speeding up the reduction of the beam waist and turning the beam down to a nanometer probe. In these cases the details of the transformation happen too fast to be tracked by the naked eye.