Semiconductor Epitaxial Crystal Growth: Silicon Nanowires

Abstract

The topic of nanowires is one of the subjects of technological rapid-progress research. This chapter reviews the experimental work and the advancement of nanowires technology since the past decade, with more focus on the recent work. Nanowires can be grown from several materials including semiconductors, such as silicon. Silicon is a semiconductor material with a very technological importance, reflected by the huge number of publications. Nanowires made of silicon are of particular technological importance, in addition to their nanomorphology-related applications. A detailed description of the first successfully reported Vapor–Liquid–Solid (VLS) 1-D growth of silicon crystals is presented. The bottom-up approach, the supersaturation in a three-phase system, and the nucleation at the Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) processes are discussed with more focus on silicon. Positional assembly of nanowires using the current available techniques, including Nanoscale Chemical Templating (NCT), can be considered as the key part of this chapter for advanced applications. Several applied and conceptional methods of developing the available technologies using nanowires are included, such as Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and photovoltaic (PV) cells, and more are explained. The final section of this chapter is devoted to the future trend in nanowires research, where it is anticipated that the effort behind nanowires research will proceed further to be implemented in daily electronic tools satisfying the demand of low-weight and small-size electronic devices.