DOI: 10.1126/science.1163494. Kinetics of Individual Nucleation Events Observed in Nanoscale Vapor-Liquid-Solid Growth

Kinetics of Individual Nucleation Events Observed in Nanoscale Vapor-Liquid-Solid Growth

10.1126/science.1163494

Crossref journal-article

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Science (221)

Abstract

We measured the nucleation and growth kinetics of solid silicon (Si) from liquid gold-silicon (AuSi) catalyst particles as the Si supersaturation increased, which is the first step of the vapor-liquid-solid growth of nanowires. Quantitative measurements agree well with a kinetic model, providing a unified picture of the growth process. Nucleation is heterogeneous, occurring consistently at the edge of the AuSi droplet, yet it is intrinsic and highly reproducible. We studied the critical supersaturation required for nucleation and found no observable size effects, even for systems down to 12 nanometers in diameter. For applications in nanoscale technology, the reproducibility is essential, heterogeneity promises greater control of nucleation, and the absence of strong size effects simplifies process design.

Bibliography

Kim, B. J., Tersoff, J., Kodambaka, S., Reuter, M. C., Stach, E. A., & Ross, F. M. (2008). Kinetics of Individual Nucleation Events Observed in Nanoscale Vapor-Liquid-Solid Growth. Science, 322(5904), 1070â1073.

Authors 6

B. J. Kim (first)
J. Tersoff (additional)
S. Kodambaka (additional)
M. C. Reuter (additional)
E. A. Stach (additional)
F. M. Ross (additional)

References 27 Referenced 207

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To establish this we measured Au crystallite sizes and AuSi droplet sizes during annealing without growth. We did not observe appreciable changes in size even for the smallest particles which shows that Ostwald ripening need not be considered in these experiments.
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We acknowledge A. Ellis and K. B. Reuter of IBM for their assistance with experimental aspects of this work M. Comer of Purdue with assistance in image analysis and financial assistance from NSF under grant DMR-0606395.

Dates

Type	When
Created	16 years, 9 months ago (Nov. 13, 2008, 4:47 p.m.)
Deposited	1 year, 7 months ago (Jan. 10, 2024, 4:40 a.m.)
Indexed	3 weeks, 4 days ago (Aug. 2, 2025, 12:51 a.m.)
Issued	16 years, 9 months ago (Nov. 14, 2008)
Published	16 years, 9 months ago (Nov. 14, 2008)
Published Print	16 years, 9 months ago (Nov. 14, 2008)

Funders 0

None

BibTeX

@article{Kim_2008, title={Kinetics of Individual Nucleation Events Observed in Nanoscale Vapor-Liquid-Solid Growth}, volume={322}, ISSN={1095-9203}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1163494}, DOI={10.1126/science.1163494}, number={5904}, journal={Science}, publisher={American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)}, author={Kim, B. J. and Tersoff, J. and Kodambaka, S. and Reuter, M. C. and Stach, E. A. and Ross, F. M.}, year={2008}, month=nov, pages={1070–1073} }

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