Synthesis of gallium-catalyzed silicon nanowires by hydrogen radical-assisted deposition method

Gallium-catalyzed silicon nanowires (SiNWs) were synthesized by the hydrogen radical-assisted deposition method. The voluminous quantities of SiNWs with various crystal growth directions were synthesized and their characteristics were estimated by using XRD, FE-SEM, TEM and EDX analyses. Most of the Ga-capped SiNWs were directly grown with some smoothly curved SiNWs. Large quantities of small-SiNWs with diameters of 20–80 nm were tree-likely grown on the large-SiNWs surface. The diameters of large-SiNWs were approximately 200 nm–2 μm. Furthermore, a simple model of growth mechanism for sub-grown silicon nanowires by the hydrogen radical-assisted deposition method was proposed.