Anisotropic capillary instability of silicon nanostructures under hydrogen anneal

作者：Barwicz T^*; Cohen G M; Reuter K B; Bangsaruntip S; Sleight J W

来源：Applied Physics Letters, 2012, 100(9): 093109.

DOI：10.1063/1.3690869

• annealing
• capillarity
• crystal structure
• elemental semiconductors
• nanowires
• silicon
• surface diffusion
• surface energy

Anneal in reduced pressure hydrogen ambient is known to induce morphological changes in silicon microstructures via markedly increased surface self-diffusivity on exposed silicon surfaces. Here, we investigate the capillary instability of silicon nanostructures under hydrogen anneal. We demonstrate that a surface diffusion mask can significantly improve stability by isolating vulnerable segments from large mass reservoirs. In addition, we find that Plateau-Rayleigh instability shows strong crystallographic dependence, which is explained by the surface energy anisotropy of silicon. We observe that nanowires are the least stable when their axial orientation corresponds to < 100 > and are increasingly stable for < 111 >, < 112 >, and < 110 >.

• 出版日期2012-2-27