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Nanostructured germanium synthesized by high-pressure chemical vapor deposition in mesoporous silica templates

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Abstract

Nanostructured semiconductors are interesting because of their varied electronic and optical properties compared to the bulk. Using ordered porous materials as templates is an appealing approach to prepare nanostructured materials. However, the very small pore sizes (< 10 nm) of many mesoporous silicas make traditional deposition methods for germanium difficult, resulting in aggregated particles or voids in the deposited material. To overcome this challenge, high-pressure chemical vapor deposition (HPCVD) has been used to deposit germanium within the pore network of KIT-5 mesoporous silica. This technique allows for smooth, continuous deposition within small, tortuous pore networks. Both crystalline and amorphous materials can be produced, expanding the applicability of the resulting materials for various uses. The resulting nanocrystalline germanium has 5-nm features derived from the parent KIT-5 and is the smallest templated material prepared using HPCVD to date. This work represents the first time a three-dimensional mesoporous silica, with features ≤ 5 nm, has been uniformly filled with a semiconductor.

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Data availability

Additional XRD analysis, indexed SAED patterns, and information about the additional mesoporous silica templates are provided as Supplementary Information. Other datasets are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Katya Bazilevskaya for help with nitrogen adsorption measurements, Ian Campbell for help with SAED indexing, Trevor Clark for FIB, and Alex Grede and Parivash Moradifar for discussions regarding characterization of these materials.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under MRSEC Grant No. DMR-1420620.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Briana Laubacker & John V. Badding

  2. Materials Research Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Ke Wang, Maxwell Wetherington, Nichole Wonderling & Suzanne E. Mohney

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    John V. Badding & Suzanne E. Mohney

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  1. Briana Laubacker
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Contributions

BL designed and performed the experiments, interpreted data, and wrote the original draft of the manuscript. KW performed transmission electron microscopy, MW assisted with collection of Raman spectra, and NW assisted with interpretation of SAXS and WAXS data. JVB conceived the investigation and established the synthesis capability. SEM contributed to interpretation of data after the death of JVB and edited the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Suzanne E. Mohney.

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Laubacker, B., Wang, K., Wetherington, M. et al. Nanostructured germanium synthesized by high-pressure chemical vapor deposition in mesoporous silica templates. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 34, 741 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-023-10101-w

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