Growth of epitaxial nanowires by controlled coarsening of strained islands

TL;DR

This paper presents a method for growing elongated epitaxial nanowires by controlling the coarsening of strained islands through manipulation of growth conditions, especially vapor pressure, balancing elastic interactions and thermodynamic forces.

Contribution

It introduces a novel growth mechanism for nanowires based on controlled desorption of strained islands, enabling size control via growth condition adjustments.

Findings

Nanowire width is determined by elastic and thermodynamic forces.

Growth conditions, such as vapor pressure, influence nanowire size.

The mechanism allows for tunable nanowire fabrication.

Abstract

We show that elongated nanowires can be grown on crystal surfaces by allowing large strained two-dimensional islands to desorb by varying the adatom supersaturation or chemical potential. The width of the wires formed in this process is determined by a competition between the repulsive elastic interactions of the long edges of the wires and the thermodynamic driving force which tends to decrease the distance between these edges. The proposed mechanism allows for control of the wire sizes by changing the growth conditions, in particular, the vapor pressure of the material that is being deposited.