Gao Di, He Rongrui, Carraro Carlo, Howe Roger T, Yang Peidong, Maboudian Roya
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
J Am Chem Soc. 2005 Apr 6;127(13):4574-5. doi: 10.1021/ja043645y.
Galvanic displacement processes are employed in water-in-oil microemulsions to deposit gold nanoclusters selectively on Si surfaces and sidewalls. The gold clusters then serve as catalysts to achieve selective growth of vertically and laterally aligned Si nanowire arrays by chemical vapor deposition via the vapor-liquid-solid growth mechanism. The size of the gold clusters is shown to have a good correlation with the microemulsion parameters, which in turn controls the size of the synthesized nanowires.