Article |
Growth of silicon nanowires on H-terminated Si {111} surface templates studied by transmission electron microscopy
1 Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Osaka University, 1-1 Machikane-yama, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-0043, Japan
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ozaki{at}ims.tsukuba.ac.jp
Abstract
We have studied the growth of silicon nanowires (SiNWs) by means of transmission electron microscopy. SiNWs are grown from nanocatalysts via the Vapor-Liquid-Solid (VLS) mechanism using silane (SiH4) gas as a source gas. The nanocatalysts are prepared on a hydrogen (H)-terminated Si surface. We have examined the formation mechanism of nanocatalysts on H-terminated surface and have observed several structural variants of SiNWs. According to the study we have suggested that many structural variations of SiNWs are possible, which modify the structural properties of SiNWs to great extents.
Keywords silicon nanowires, nanocatalysts, H-terminated Si surface, structural variations of silicon nanowires, HRTEM, CL spectroscopy
Received 1 December 2004, accepted 15 December 2004