SYNTHESIS OF SILICON NANOWIRES ON SILICON WAFER BY CHEMICAL VAPOR DEPOSITION METHOD

Abstract

Recently, attention has been directed towards the nanowires of spa-bonded elemental silicon, which is a quasi-one dimensional crystalline material with a tetrahedral bonded structure. Because of its small dimension, unique shape, and high surface-to-volume ratio, silicon nanowires (SiNWs) are expected to exhibit unusual quantum confinement effects as well as potentially useful electrical, optical, mechanical, and chemical properties. A direct growth of silicon nanowires on silicon wafer is especially promising as it opens a direct gate into the field of silicon microtechnology and could open . great opportunities for the future use of nanowires directly . in pre-defined microelectronic or nanoelectronic structures. This is even more important for the case of a catalyst-free growth as this would avoid the possible poisoning of microelectronic fabrication processes. However, this enhanced understanding of the nanowire growth process is missing at the moment. The present work is to synthesize silicon nanowires on silicon wafer by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. 1-d nanomaterial synthesis by CVD is essentially a two-step process consisting of a catalyst preparation step followed by heating the sample in the CVD chamber. In the present work catalyst has been deposited on silicon wafer by two methods. The nm-sized platinum catalyst particles are deposited on bacterial protein membranes (so-called s-layers) on the substrate. Platinum and cobalt clusters are deposited on substrate as such...