Uphill Diffusion Induced Point Contact Reaction in Si Nanowires

Yi-Chia Chou; Lih-Juann Chen; King-Ning Tu

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c01265

Uphill Diffusion Induced Point Contact Reaction in Si Nanowires

Nano Lett. 2022 Sep 14;22(17):6895-6899. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c01265. Epub 2022 Aug 16.

Authors

Yi-Chia Chou¹, Lih-Juann Chen², King-Ning Tu^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan.
² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan.
³ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon 999077, Hong Kong, SAR.
⁴ Department of Electrical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon 999077, Hong Kong, SAR.

PMID: 35972227
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c01265

Abstract

The events of repeating nucleation in point contact reactions between nanowires of Si and Ni or Co have been revisited here due to uphill diffusion as well as an extremely high supersaturation, over a factor of 1000, needed for the nucleation. Also what is the diameter of the point contact needs to be defined. The stepwise growth of nanoscale epitaxial silicide can occur because the repeating nucleation events are restricted in nanoscale wires.

Keywords: epitaxial reaction; nanowires; point contact reaction; repeating nucleation; silicide formation; uphill diffusion.