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Catalyst preparation for CMOS-compatible silicon nanowire synthesis

Nature Nanotechnology volume 4, pages 654–657 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Metallic contamination was key to the discovery of semiconductor nanowires1, but today it stands in the way of their adoption by the semiconductor industry. This is because many of the metallic catalysts required for nanowire growth are not compatible with standard CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) fabrication processes. Nanowire synthesis with those metals that are CMOS compatible, such as aluminium2 and copper3,4,5, necessitate temperatures higher than 450 °C, which is the maximum temperature allowed in CMOS processing. Here, we demonstrate that the synthesis temperature of silicon nanowires using copper-based catalysts is limited by catalyst preparation. We show that the appropriate catalyst can be produced by chemical means at temperatures as low as 400 °C. This is achieved by oxidizing the catalyst precursor, contradicting the accepted wisdom that oxygen prevents metal-catalysed nanowire growth. By simultaneously solving material compatibility and temperature issues, this catalyst synthesis could represent an important step towards real-world applications of semiconductor nanowires6,7,8,9,10,11.

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Figure 1: Silicon nanowire yield at T = 400 °C with oxide-free and oxidized copper seed layer.
Figure 2: Structural and chemical characterization of nanowires.
Figure 3: Oxidation at the tip of the nanowire in an ambient atmosphere.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR) through Carnot Funding. We thank D. Lafond and B. Florin for assistance during electron microscopy measurements. We thank C. Charrier and her team for clean room technical assistance. We thank K. Haxaire for diffusion-barrier and metal deposition.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CEA, LETI, MINATEC, Grenoble, F38054, France

    Vincent T. Renard, Michael Jublot, Patrice Gergaud, Peter Cherns, Denis Rouchon, Amal Chabli & Vincent Jousseaume

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  1. Vincent T. Renard
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  2. Michael Jublot
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Contributions

V.R. and V.J. designed the experiments. V.R. synthesized the nanowires and performed SEM observations. M.J. performed TEM measurements, P.C. tomography experiments, D.R. Raman measurements and P.G. XRD measurements. All the authors analysed the data. V.R. and M.J. co-wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Vincent Jousseaume.

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Renard, V., Jublot, M., Gergaud, P. et al. Catalyst preparation for CMOS-compatible silicon nanowire synthesis. Nature Nanotech 4, 654–657 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2009.234

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