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Article Cite This: ACS Omega 2018, 3, 1684−1688
Copper-Stabilized Si/Au Nanowhiskers for Advanced Nanoelectronic Applications Ksenia Yu Maksimova,*,† Anatoly A. Kozlov,† Petr V. Shvets,† Ulyana Yu Koneva,† Oksana V. Yurkevich,† Oleg I. Lebedev,‡ Oleg F. Vyvenko,§ Vladimir Yu Mikhailovskii,§ and Aleksandr Yu Goikhman† †
REC “Functional Nanomaterials”, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Gaidara Street 6, Kaliningrad 236001, Russian Federation ‡ Laboratoire CRISMAT, UMR 6508 CNRS/ENSICAEN/UCBN, 6 bd. du Maréchal Juin, F-14050 Caen Cedex 4, France § Saint Petersburg State University, Ul’anovskaya 3, Old Petergof, Saint Petersburg 198504, Russian Federation S Supporting Information *
ABSTRACT: We report here the growth and functional properties of silicon-based nanowhisker (NW) diodes produced by the vapor−liquid−solid process using a pulsed laser deposition technique. For the first time, we demonstrate that this method could be employed to control the size and shape of silicon NWs by using a two-component catalyst material (Au/Cu ≈ 60:1). During the NW growth, copper is distributed on the outer surface of the NW, whereas gold sticks as a droplet to its top. The length of NWs is defined by the total amount of copper in the catalyst alloy droplet. The measurements of the electrical transport properties revealed that in contact with the substrate, individual NWs demonstrate typical I−V diode characteristics. Our approach can become an important new tool in the design of novel electronic components.
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was applied to fabricate germanium14 or IV−V semiconductor15 NWs. The unique features of the VLS process enable us to control the NW structure and functionality by changing such parameters as the substrate temperature,16 the amount of growth substance in the reaction chamber atmosphere,17 and so forth. This approach employs the growth of self-organized structures, where each NW might act as a separate electronic component. This results in a dramatic decrease of the size of the produced devices and significant simplification of the fabrication process. Silicon NWs can be produced via the VLS technique by chemical vapor deposition,18,19 electron-beam evaporation,20 molecular beam epitaxy,21 magnetron sputtering,22 and pulsed laser deposition23,24 (PLD). Among these technologies, PLD is the most flexible one in terms of plasma energy range (10−100 eV) and growth speeds. Also, PLD provides a unique opportunity of precise multielement codeposition with low dopant atomic concentrations (
