Manganese silicide nanowires via metallic flux nanonucleation: growth mechanism and temperature-dependent resistivity

Abstract

Mn5Si3 nanowires are believed to be the building blocks of the newest trends of flexible and stretchable devices in nanoelectronics. In this sense, growing Mn5Si3 nanowires, as well as characterizing their electronic transport properties provide insight into their phenomenology. In this work, we report on the growth mechanism of Mn5Si3 nanowires produced by the metallic flux nanonucleation method, as well as the resistivity measurements of these nanostructures. Our calculation allows us, by using the Washburn equation for pore infiltration, to give a guess on why we obtain Mn-rich nanowires. In addition, some morphological aspects of the diameter-modulated Mn5Si3 nanowires were discussed based on the classical nucleation theory. From the resistivity measurements for the smallest diameter among the nanowires, we observed a significant reduction of around 37 % of the phonons characteristic temperature by fitting the Bloch-Grünesein formula with other sources of scattering. Our results lead to a better understanding on the recent metallic flux nanonucleation growth method, as well as going a step further into the electronic transport properties of the Mn5Si3 nanowires.