Si nanowires growth catalyzed by TiSi/sub 2/ islands in gas-source MBE

As devices in modern integrated circuits become smaller and smaller, the fabrication process become increasingly expensive, and sub-100nm feature sizes become difficult to produce. New nano-scale self-assembling technology, such as catalyzed nanowires growth and quantum dot growth, may benefit integrated-circuit production by eliminating critical lithography step. In these self-assembled systems, small features are formed using chemical reactions and/or crystal growth with limited or coarse lithography. Using TiSi/sub 2/ islands as a catalyst, we have grown Si nanowires in molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) using Si/sub 2/H/sub 6/ as a gas source. Approximately one monolayer of Ti was deposited on Si[001] wafers at 500/spl deg/C and then annealed above 800/spl deg/C to form TiSi/sub 2/ islands. The Si nanowires were then grown at 500/spl deg/C using Si/sub 2/H/sub 6/ gas as the Si source.