Nanowires / Nanoobjects
Silicon Nanowires by UHV-CVD
|
S. Senz
Silicon nanowires are grown using an ultra high vacuum (UHV) system. Inside this vacuum system the pressure is reduced down to 10-8 Pa, about 0.000 000 000 000 1 times the ordinary air pressure. This allows to handle surfaces with dangling bonds without degradation by chemical reactions for several hours. The surface of a wafer can be covered by thin metal films, which break up into islands upon annealing. After formation of metal nanoparticles a precursor gas is introduced and at the position of each metal particle one silicon nanowire is grown. This process is similar to chemical vapour deposition (CVD) of silicon, but the growth velocity is enhanced locally by a catalytic activity of the metal nanoparticle.
| MethodResults SEM and TEMResults using non-gold catalystsModellingTemplate-assisted growth |
