Plasma effects in semiconducting nanowire growth

Abstract

Three case studies are presented to show low-temperature plasma-specific effects in the solution of (i) effective control of nucleation and growth; (ii) environmental friendliness; and (iii) energy efficiency critical issues in semiconducting nanowire growth. The first case (related to (i) and (iii)) shows that in catalytic growth of Si nanowires, plasma-specific effects lead to a substantial increase in growth rates, decrease of the minimum nanowire thickness, and much faster nanowire nucleation at the same growth temperatures. For nucleation and growth of nanowires of the same thickness, much lower temperatures are required. In the second example (related to (ii)), we produce Si nanowire networks with controllable nanowire thickness, length, and area density without any catalyst or external supply of Si building material. This case is an environmentally-friendly alternative to the commonly used Si microfabrication based on a highly-toxic silane precursor gas. The third example is related to (iii) and demonstrates that ZnO nanowires can be synthesized in plasma-enhanced CVD at significantly lower process temperatures than in similar neutral gas-based processes and without compromising structural quality and performance of the nanowires. Our results are relevant to the development of next-generation nanoelectronic, optoelectronic, energy conversion and sensing devices based on semiconducting nanowires.

Rapid Fabrication Technique for Interpenetrated ZnO Nanotetrapod Networks for Fast UV Sensors

“…Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) also offers the possibilities of growing different type of ZnO nanostructures for sensors and photodetectors. Recent introduced plasma and plasma‐enhanced CVD processes also allow versatile fabrication of various metal oxide and other wide bandgap semiconductor nanostructures with interesting electronic and photonic properties . Although the synthesis of ZnO nano‐microstructures using VLS, CVD, or other techniques has been extensively studied and optimized in the past few years, very few reports on direct integration of such nanostructures on a chip and in devices.…”

Property–Performance Control of Multidimensional, Hierarchical, Single‐Crystalline ZnO Nanoarchitectures

“…[15,16,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25] Moreover, a variety of ZnO morphologies, including nanorods, nanobelts, nanowires, nanocombs, nanorings, tetrapods and nanocages, have been synthesized. [15,16,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] However, effective and systematic control of the morphology, crystallinity, composition, aspect ratio and preferential growth orientation of low-dimensional ZnO nanostructures is still lacking. Furthermore, detailed and clear understanding of the growth mechanism of low-dimensional ZnO nanostructures is still far from complete.…”

Fabrication of Macroscopically Flexible and Highly Porous 3D Semiconductor Networks from Interpenetrating Nanostructures by a Simple Flame Transport Approach

“…The growth of a large variety of Si, GaAs, or ZnO nanostructures using VLS has been reported. Many other non‐conventional approaches such as chemical vapor deposition, microwave chemistry, combustion synthesis, plasma processing, electrochemical deposition, cluster drifting, and flame synthesis have also been used for synthesizing different metal‐oxide nano‐microstructures and corresponding growth mechanisms are almost understood. In the typical flame synthesis processes, different types of precursor materials have been used in complicated setups; e.g., Xu et al inserted Zn‐plated probes in the inverse co‐flow jet diffusion flame, whereas Strobel et al have used aerosol‐based flame synthesis with liquid precursor.…”