Deterministic One-to-One Synthesis of Germanium Nanowires and Individual Gold Nano-Seed Patterning for Aligned Nanowire Arrays

TL;DR

This paper presents a controlled method for synthesizing Ge nanowires with high yield from Au seeds, demonstrating size-dependent growth conditions, patterning techniques, and post-growth alignment for potential nanoelectronics applications.

Contribution

It introduces a deterministic one-to-one synthesis process for Ge nanowires with precise patterning and alignment, advancing nanowire fabrication techniques.

Findings

Achieved ~100% yield of Ge nanowires from Au seed particles.

Identified size-dependent growth regimes for Ge nanowires.

Demonstrated patterning and flow-alignment for ordered nanowire arrays.

Abstract

It is demonstrated by the current work controlled one-to-one synthesis of Ge nanowires (GeNWs) with ~100% yield from Au seed particles. The optimum GeNW growth conditions are found to be size dependent. For < 50 nm Au seeds, under-growth, one-to-one growth and over-growth can occur depending on the growth conditions. Growth of large GeNWs appears to be diffusion limited. These results should have generic implications to the synthesis of other types of nanowires via vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) processes. Patterning and positioning of individual Au nanoparticles are achieved by lithographic patterning and used for successful one-to-one nanowire growth. Finally, post-growth flow-alignment is used to obtain quasi-parallel nanowires originating from well-controlled single-particle sites. These results are important to the fundamental science of nanomaterials synthesis and may find important applications in various fields including high performance nanoelectronics.