Silicon Nanowires: A Review on Aspects of their Growth and their Electrical Properties

This paper summarizes some of the essential aspects of silicon-nanowire growth and of their electrical properties. In the first part, a brief description of the different growth techniques is given, though the general focus of this work is on chemical vapor deposition of silicon nanowires. The advantages and disadvantages of the different catalyst materials for silicon-wire growth are discussed at length. Thereafter, in the second part, three thermodynamic aspects of silicon-wire growth via the vapor-liquid-solid mechanism are presented and discussed. These are the expansion of the base of epitaxially grown Si wires, a stability criterion regarding the surface tension of the catalyst droplet, and the…