Ernesto Joselevich at the Weizmann Institute's Chemistry Faculty and his team have devised an innovative method to develop long and well aligned semiconductor nanowires.
This research would allow the manufacturing of semiconductor nanostructures with improved optical and electronic properties that are ideal for applications such as photovoltaics, computers, transistors, information storage media, lasers and LEDs.
The research team developed gallium nitride nanowires utilizing a process that normally creates vertical nanowires with superior electronic and optical properties. These vertical nanowires become disoriented only after the assembling and harvesting of nanowires into arrays.
To overcome this issue, the research team utilized sapphire that was purposely cut along various planes of the crystal as a base to develop the nanowires. The cuts produce different surface designs such as nanoscale steps between the various planes of the crystal and V-shaped, accordion-like grooves.
The surface grooves and steps cause the nanowires to develop horizontally within the grooves or along their edges, resulting in the production of orderly arranged millimeter-long nanowire arrays. The research team has managed to couple in one step, the production and assembly of orderly-structured nanowires with novel properties ideal for numerous applications. However, the study does not clarify the fact behind the production of horizontal nanowires using a method that usually manufactures vertical nanowires.
Joselevich stated that the results of the research study were unanticipated since the nanowires that they developed had the same electronic and optical properties of that of vertically grown nanowires, since in a normal scenario, developing semiconductors on a surface brings in defects that reduce their quality.
Source: http://www.weizmann.ac.il