Growth Mechanism of Silicon Nanowires

Abstract

Among the variety of nanostructural synthesis methods, oxide-assisted growth is unique in terms of not only the quality and quantity of nanostructures synthesized but also its interesting and novel mechanism. It has been revealed by our theoretical calculations that it is the silicon suboxide clusters which possess high reactivity on their surface silicon sites that facilitate the nucleation and growth of silicon nanostructures by allowing them to grow and form sp³ cores after a critical size. The high possibility and crystallographic dependence of oxygen diffusion allow the so-formed silicon nanostructures grow along certain growth directions (<110> and <112>).