Intermetallic compounds containing transition metals and group III-V metals tend to possess strong correlations and high catalytic activities, both of which can be enhanced via reduced dimensionality. Nanostructuring is an effective approach to explore this possibility, yet the synthesis of nanostructured intermetallics is challenging due to vast differences in melting points and vapor pressures of the constituent elements. In this work, we demonstrate that this challenge can be overcome with thermomechanical nanomolding (TMNM), exemplified by the synthesis of intermetallic ${\mathrm{CoIn}}_3$ and ${\mathrm{RhIn}}_3$ nanowires. We show that TMNM successfully extrudes single-crystalline nanowires of these compounds down to the 20-nm diameter range, and the nanowires remain metallic with resistivity values higher than calculated bulk resistivity. We discuss possible effects of surface roughness scattering, vacancy-induced scattering, and surface oxidation, on the measured resistivities of the nanowires. For ${\mathrm{CoIn}}_3$ nanowires, the measured resistivity values are the first reported values for this compound.

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• Nanowires
• Density functional theory
• Resistivity measurements
• Scanning transmission electron microscopy