VLS growth of semiconductor SiC nanowires for electronics applications

While investigations of semiconductor nanowires (NWs) has a long history, a significant progress is yet to be made in silicon carbide (SiC) NW technologies before they are ready to be utilized in electronic applications. In this work, SiC NW polytype control, NW axis orientation with respect to the growth substrate and other issues of potential technological importance are investigated. A new method for growing SiC NWs by vapor-liquid-solid mechanism, based on an in-situ vapor phase delivery of a metal catalyst to the growth surface during chemical vapor deposition was used. This approached provided a opportunity to control NW density and examine NW orientation. The orientation analysis established that only certain orientations of the NW axes were allowed when growing on a SiC substrate. The ease of controlling the NW density enabled by the growth method developed in this work, combined with the newly obtained knowledge about how to grow well-aligned NW arrays, offer new opportunities for developing novel SiC NW electronic and photonic devices.