Bimetal Ga–Sn catalyzed growth for the novel morphologies of silicon oxide nanowires

The large size, low melting point bimetal Ga–Sn can be used as an effective catalyst for the large-scale growth of highly aligned, closely packed silicon oxide nanowires bunches. The experimental results show that the silicon oxide nanowires tend to grow bunch by bunch. For each bunch, numerous nanowires simultaneously nucleate, grow at nearly the same rate and direction, and simultaneously stop growing. The prickly spheres, whisk-like, echinus-like, hedgehog-like, and dandelions-like silicon oxide nanowires were formed under different atomic ratio of Ga and Sn in the alloy ball. A growth model was proposed. The experimental results further expand the growth mechanism of the quasi-one-dimensional nanostructures to a broader range.