Abstract
Amorphous silicon nanowires (NWs), 3–50 nm thick and up to 4 μm long, were grown by room-temperature continuous wave laser ablation of Si in high-pressure (0.1–0.9 MPa) Ar gas without the addition of any catalysts. The diameter and length of the NWs increased as the pressures of the ambient Ar increased. Sphere-like Si particles with diameters of 4–110 nm were observed at the tips of grown NWs and their diameters exhibited a strong correlation with the NW diameters. We propose a stress-driven self-catalytic vapor-liquid-solid mechanism to explain the growth of the NWs.
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Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the “Kakenhi (23510128)” Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research provided by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in support of this work. This work has been partly supported by the Cooperation of Innovative Technology and Advanced Research in Evolution Area (City Area) Project of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology.
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Kokai, F., Inoue, S., Hidaka, H. et al. Catalyst-free growth of amorphous silicon nanowires by laser ablation. Appl. Phys. A 112, 1–7 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-012-7169-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-012-7169-y