Dendrite‐Assisted Growth of Silicon Nanowires in Electroless Metal Deposition

Abstract

This article concerns the detailed investigations on the silver dendrite‐assisted growth of single‐crystalline silicon nanowires, and their possible self‐assembling nanoelectrochemistry growth mechanism. The growth of silicon nanowires was carried out through an electroless metal deposition process in a conventional autoclave containing aqueous HF and AgNO3 solution near room temperature. In order to explore the mechanism and prove the centrality of silver dendrites in the growth of silicon nanowires, other etching solution systems with different metal species were also investigated in this work. The morphology of etched silicon substrates strongly depends upon the composition of the etching solution, especially the metal species. Our experimental results prove that the simultaneous formation of silver dendrites is a guarantee of the preservation of free‐standing nanoscale electrolytic cells on the silicon substrate, and also assists in the final formation of silicon nanowire arrays on the substrate surface.

Silicon Nanowires Substrates Fabrication for Ultra-Sensitive Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Sensors

“…[2][3][4][5]14] The cone shaped bundles creation can be partially correlated with the SiNWs elasticity and surface tension during drying process. [1] Furthermore, the van der Waals force influences the SiNWs tips [1] and stick them more as the etching time increases.…”

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6] Thanks to its high trace level detection and chemical fingerprint identification, SERS became one of the well accepted scientific tools which still looks for its development, novel applications and market. [7,8] SERS signal intensity depends on analyte -plasmons interaction i.e.…”

“…Therefore the choice of the appropriate substrate for a specific analyte and the analyte vicinity to metal NP is of the high importance. [9,10] Among non-colloidal substrates, silicon nanostructures such as porous silicon [6] and silicon nanowires [2][3][4][5]7] (SiNWs) draw attention owing to their low-cost fabrication and high SERS measurement reproducibility. SiNWs can be produced by chemical vapour deposition, laser ablation, vapour transport and condensation, molecular beam epitaxy, annealing of catalytic nanoclusters on silicon, solution growth, and catalytic etching.…”

Novel Electroless Metal Deposition - Oxidation on Mn – MnxOy for Water Remediation

“…In this case, it was assumed that the simultaneous growth of metal dendrites, accompanied with the etching of the silicon wafer, was important for the formation of 1D nanostructures (Peng, 2003).…”

Heterointegration of Pt/Si/Ag Nanowire Photodiodes and Their Photocatalytic Properties

“…However, the synthetic process of the reported nanowire heterostructures, involving colloid nanolithography, dry etching and electrodeposition, is rather complicated, time-consuming and expensive. Here we report a greatly simplified approach to synthesize hetero-integrated Pt/Si/Ag nanowire diodes, in which the silicon nanowire arrays are synthesized through a low-cost, one-step silver-assisted wet chemical etching method [45][46][47] and Pt/Si/Ag heterojunction nanowires are prepared through platinum electroplating [48] and self-catalyzed photoreduction of silver nitrate in bulk solution. [44] Photocatalytic studies show that the as-synthesized Pt/Si/Ag nanowire photocatalysts exhibit high activity and excellent stability when used for the photocatalytic degradation of organic dyes such as indigo carmine (IC) and toxic pollutants such as 4-nitrophenol (4NP).…”