Characterization of silicon nanowires grown on silicon, stainless steel and indium tin oxide substrates
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Characterization of silicon nanowires grown on silicon, stainless steel and indium tin oxide substrates Philip Jennings · Zhong-Tao Jiang · Nicholas M.W. Wyatt · David Parlevliet · Christine Creagh · Chun-Yang Yin · Hantarto Widjaja · Nick Mondinos
Received: 22 October 2012 / Accepted: 16 January 2013 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
Abstract Silicon nanowires (SiNWs) have been grown on crystalline silicon (Si), indium tin oxide (ITO) and stainless steel (SS) substrates using a gold catalyst coating with a thickness of 200 nm via pulsed plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PPECVD). Their morphological, mineralogical and surface characteristics have been investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Raman analysis. SiNWs growth is accompanied by oxidation, thus yielding partially (SiOx ) and fully oxidized (SiO2 ) Si sheaths. The mean diameters of these SiNWs range from 140 to 185 nm. Si with (111) and (220) planes exists in SiNWs grown on all three substrates while Si with a (311) plane is detected only for Si and ITO substrates. Computational simulation using density functional theory (DFT) has also been conducted to supplement the experimental Raman analyses for crystalline Si and SiO2 . XPS results reveal that ca. 30 % of the SiNWs have been oxidized for all substrates. The results presented in this paper can be used to aid selection of appropriate substrates for SiNW growth, depending on specific applications.
P. Jennings · Z.-T. Jiang () · N.M.W. Wyatt · D. Parlevliet · C. Creagh · H. Widjaja · N. Mondinos School of Engineering and Energy, Murdoch University, Murdoch, 6150 WA, Australia e-mail: [email protected] Fax: +61-08-93606346 C.-Y. Yin School of Chemical and Mathematical Sciences, Murdoch University, Murdoch, 6150 WA, Australia
1 Introduction The favorable electronic properties of silicon (Si) have been thoroughly documented and widely applied in various industrial processes, especially for the manufacture of electronic devices. Even though it has long been indispensable in the microelectronics industry, demand for smaller dimension devices will soon reach beyond the bulk Si limit of size reduction [1]. Silicon nanowires (SiNWs) exhibit high surface-to-volume ratios and, as such, they exhibit favorable optoelectronic, chemical and mechanical properties compared with bulk Si [2]. The combination of the possibility of integrating SiNWs with pre-existing technologies and infrastructure, as well as the demand for lower dimensionality devices, has piqued the interest of numerous solid state physics research groups worldwide. SiNW research is a semi-mature field, with studies being conducted as early as 1964 [3] but new characterization and manufacturing technologies have afforded new research opportunities half a century later. The bulk of recent studies on SiNWs are centered on their increasingly small diameters [4–6] and their integration into micro/nano electronic [7] or photovoltaic [8] devices. One of th
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