Xu et al. Nanoscale Research Letters 2011, 6:525 http://www.nanoscalereslett.com/content/6/1/525 Page 6 of 7 Figure 5 Patterned Ag nanowire arrays on glass substrate. (a) Optical image; (b) SAM C-scan mode image; (c) typical two oscilloscope traces obtained with glass substrate facing up. Figure 6 AFM analysis for 10 × 10-μm2 areas. (a) Topographic images; (b) conductive AFM image shows nearly 95% copper nanowires are electrically conductive. Conclusions A useful method has been developed to fabricate ultra- long metal nanowire arrays, from micrometre-size pat- tern to large area (of 25 mm diameter), on a solid sub- strate by using a ready-made AAM as template. By mechanically polishing the surface after nanowire fabri- cation, nanowire arrays with uniform length up to 30 μm were achieved. The nanowires and substrate were bonded via intermediate metal film layer, which showed a very good adhesion. Conducting AFM analysis showed that nearly 95% of the nanowires had good electrical connection with the substrate. While only metal nano- wires fabricated on Si and glass substrate are shown in this letter, the approach described here can be adjusted to deposit any conductive materials, oxides, conductive polymers and semiconductors, on any solid substrate as well as flexible polymer substrate. In addition, by slightly changing the fabrication procedures, individually addres- sable nanowire pads/electrodes with micrometre size can also be fabricated (see Figure S3 in Additional file 1). It is also possible to achieve longer (higher aspect ratio) and larger area coverage of these nanowire arrays with uniform length for nearly 100% pore filling, if in- house fabricated AAM with homogenous pore distribu- tion and larger size template is used. Additional material Additional file 1: Electronic Supplementary Material. http://www. nanoscalereslett.com/imedia/2066074704584386/supp1.doc. Figure S1, pull-off adhesion tensile test of silver nanowire arrays within AAM template fabricated on Au-coated Si substrate; Figure S2, conductive