Fabrication of horizontal silicon nanowire arrays on insulator by ion irradiation

Abstract

We report a simple and potentially mass productive technique to fabricate horizontal single crystalline Si nanowire arrays on insulating substrate based on a self-organized pattern formation mechanism during Xe+ ion beam irradiation of Si-on-insulator material. A periodic ripple surface pattern is created by ion irradiation at 67o incidence angle to the surface normal. The transfer of this pattern to the oxide interface results in an array of electrically disconnected parallel ordered Si nanowires on the insulating oxide. Doping of the nanowires was demonstrated by boron ion implantation and annealing. The morphology and resistivity of the narrow nanowires with large aspect ratio were analysed by cross sectional transmission electron microscopy and scanning spreading resistance microscopy, respectively. Physical reasons of the observed low carrier activation are discussed

Nanopatterning of the (001) surface of crystalline Ge by ion irradiation at off-normal incidence: Experiment and simulation

“…The pattern morphology depends on which surface processes are dominant under the given experimental conditions; various surface morphologies including parallel ripples with sinusoidal or sawtooth profile [10][11][12][13][14]; nanocone [15][16][17] or nanohole [18][19][20] patterns; and pyramidal structures with three-, four-, or sixfold symmetry [14,21,22] have been reported. With possible applications of this self-assembled surface pattern formation in bottom-up nanofabrication already being explored [23][24][25][26], there are still fundamental aspects to be clarified: For instance, the influence of the polar and azimuthal ion beam direction on the patterning morphology has been widely studied for amorphous or amorphized surfaces with isotropic diffusion, but a corresponding investigation is still lacking for crystalline surfaces with anisotropic diffusion in the reverse epitaxy regime [21]-and so is a theoretical description. In a continuation of other recent work [27], in this paper we present results on the dependence of the ion-induced nanoscale patterns on Ge(001) on both the polar and azimuthal angles of ion incidence.…”

Self-organized nanopatterning of silicon surfaces by ion beam sputtering

“…As shown, the pattern anisotropy can be exploited as growth template but also interesting optical properties may appear from the nanopatterned silicon itself [289]. Regarding future applications in micro(opto)electronic devices, the formation of confined crystalline silicon nanoripples has also been realized on SiO 2 [290]. Furthermore, additional applications are being developed in other IBS surfaces, particularly silicon dioxide [291,292], which can be directly adapted to the case of silicon.…”

Ion damage overrides structural disorder in silicon surface nanopatterning by low-energy ion beam sputtering

“…The case of silicon (Si) targets is focusing a large deal of attention [5], as low-dimensional Si structures like nanowires are currently demonstrating a number of promising, novel structural, electronic, and transport properties [11,12], with potential for a new generation of quantum devices [13]. Actually, recent assessment of the key dynamical role played by unwanted metal incorporation has enabled an improved understanding of experiments with clean, mono-elemental Si targets [14][15][16][17].…”