Growth and Kinetics of Elemental and Binary Semiconducting Nanowires

Growth of 1D semiconducting nanowires plays a major role in the performance of devices and their applications. Here we present the growth and kinetics of an elemental (Si) and binary (Silica-SiO
x
) NWs using a unified kinetic framework. The presented model incorporates all the atomistic processes and their significance is emphasized during the validation. To this end, an energy cascade is shown for the vapour-liquid-solid (VLS) growth process as a generalized case and the thermodynamic driving force (supersaturation) was deduced for Si and SiO
X
NWs growth. It is noted that the growth dynamics with catalyst particle is affected when two components are involved in the growth process. The growth rate of NWs was estimated for the diameter range of 10–100 nm for both the cases with respect to Si supersaturation
$(\pmb{C}/\pmb{C}_{0})$
in the Au-Si catalyst particle. The experimentally measured growth rate of Si (1–100 nm/s) and SiO
x
(500–1000 nm/s) is compared with the theoretically estimated values.