An In-Plane Solid-Liquid-Solid Growth Mode for Self-Avoiding Lateral Silicon Nanowires

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

We report an in-plane solid-liquid-solid (IPSLS) mode for obtaining self-avoiding lateral silicon nanowires (SiNW) in a reacting-gas-free annealing process, where the growth of SiNWs is guided by liquid indium drops that transform the surrounding a-Si:H matrix into crystalline SiNWs. The SiNWs can be ~mm long, with the smallest diameter down to ~22 nm. A high growth rate of >10² nm/s and rich evolution dynamics are revealed in a real-time in situ scanning electron microscopy observation. A qualitative growth model is proposed to account for the major features of this IPSLS SiNW growth mode.