Reduction of nanowire diameter beyond lithography limits by controlled catalyst dewetting

Catalyst assisted vapour-liquid-solid is the most common method to realize bottom-up nanowire growth; establishing a parallel process for obtaining nanoscale catalysts at pre-defined locations is paramount for further advancement towards commercial nanowire applications. Herein, the effect of a sele...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of physics. D, Applied physics Applied physics, 2016-04, Vol.49 (16), p.165309-165318
Main Authors: Calahorra, Yonatan, Kerlich, Alexander, Amram, Dor, Gavrilov, Arkady, Cohen, Shimon, Ritter, Dan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
bottom up
catalyst engineering
Catalysts
Dewetting
Lithography
Masks
Migration
Nanowires
Spreading
Strategy
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Summary:Catalyst assisted vapour-liquid-solid is the most common method to realize bottom-up nanowire growth; establishing a parallel process for obtaining nanoscale catalysts at pre-defined locations is paramount for further advancement towards commercial nanowire applications. Herein, the effect of a selective area mask on the dewetting of metallic nanowire catalysts, deposited within lithography-defined mask pinholes, is reported. It was found that thin disc-like catalysts, with diameters of 120-450 nm, were transformed through dewetting into hemisphere-like catalysts, having diameters 2-3 fold smaller; the process was optimized to about 95% yield in preventing catalyst splitting, as would otherwise be expected due to their thickness-to-diameter ratio, which was as low as 1/60. The catalysts subsequently facilitated InP and InAs nanowire growth. We suggest that the mask edges prevent surface migration mediated spreading of the dewetted metal, and therefore induce its agglomeration into a single particle. This result presents a general strategy to diminish lithography-set dimensions for NW growth, and may answer a fundamental challenge faced by bottom-up nanowire technology.
ISSN:0022-3727
1361-6463
DOI:10.1088/0022-3727/49/16/165309