The Quiet Revolution of Inorganic Nanowires

Inorganic materials in the form of thin films are ubiquitous in various applications. In the last two to three decades, the research community and industry have grown thin films of silicon, germanium, III-V compounds, various oxides, nitrides, antimonides, metals, and dielectrics using techniques such as chemical vapor deposition (CVD), metal organic CVD (MOCVD), and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). These thin films have directly contributed to all the advances we see today in computers, electronics, optoelectronics, and microelectromechanical systems. Some examples include silicon and its oxide and nitride in logic and memory chips, GaAs and AlGaAs in lasers, and tin oxide thin films in chemical sensors. In the nano era, recent efforts have focused on growing all of the aforementioned materials in the form of one-dimensional (1 -D) nanowires.