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Silicon nanowire

Silicon nanowires, also referred to as SiNWs, are a type of semiconductor nanowire most often formed from a silicon precursor by etching of a solid or through catalyzed growth from a vapor or liquid phase. The physical and chemical characteristics of silicon nanowires differ from those of bulk silicon material, which could lead to applications in lithium-ion batteries, thermoelectrics and sensors. Initial synthesis of SiNWs is often accompanied by thermal oxidation steps to yield structures of accurately tailored size and morphology.

Applications
SiNWs exhibit charge trapping behavior which renders such systems of value in applications necessitating electron hole separation such as photovoltaics, and photocatalysts. Experiment on nanowire solar cells has led to a improvement of the power conversion efficiency of SiNW solar cells from 17%. The ability for lithium ions to intercalate into silicon structures renders various Si nanostructures of interest towards applications as anodes in Li-ion batteries (LiBs). SiNWs are of interest as such anodes as they exhibit the ability to undergo significant lithiation while maintaining structural integrity and electrical connectivity. Silicon nanowires are efficient thermoelectric generators because they combine a high electrical conductivity, owing to the bulk properties of doped Si, with low thermal conductivity due to the small cross section. Silicon nanowire field-effect transistor (SiNWFET) Charge trapping behavior and tunable surface governed transport properties of SiNWs render this category of nanostructures of interest towards use as metal insulator semiconductors and field effect transistors, where the silicon nanowire is the main channel of the FET which connect the source to the drain terminal, facilitating electron transfer between the two terminals with further applications as nano-electronic storage devices, in flash memory, logic devices as well as chemical, gas and biological sensors. After SiNWFET were first reported in 2001, there was interest in the sensor area, because of their superior physical properties such as high carrier mobility, high current switch ratio, and close to ideal subthreshold slope. Furthermore, they are cost-efficient and could be manufactured on large scale, since it is compatible with CMOS fabricating technology. Specifically, in bioresearch, SiNWFET has high sensitivity and specificity to biological targets and could offer label-free detection after being modified with small biological molecules to match the target object. SiNWFET could be fabricated in arrays and be selectively functionalized, which enables the simultaneous detection and analysis of multiple targets. ==Synthesis==
Synthesis
Several synthesis methods are known for SiNWs and these can be broadly divided into methods which start with bulk silicon and remove material to yield nanowires, also known as top-down synthesis, and methods which use a chemical or vapor precursor to build nanowires in a process generally considered to be bottom-up synthesis. • Thermal evaporation oxide-assisted growth (OAG) • Metal-assisted chemical etching (MaCE) Bottom-up synthesis methods • Vapour–liquid–solid (VLS) growth – a type of catalysed CVD often using silane as Si precursor and gold nanoparticles as catalyst (or 'seed'). Thermal oxidation Subsequent to physical or chemical processing, either top-down or bottom-up, to obtain initial silicon nanostructures, thermal oxidation steps are often applied in order to obtain materials with desired size and aspect ratio. Silicon nanowires exhibit a distinct and useful self-limiting oxidation behaviour whereby oxidation effectively ceases due to diffusion limitations, which can be modeled. ==References==
Source: Wikipedia ↗
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