Atomically precise self-organization of perfectly ordered gadolinium-silicide nanomeshes controlled by anisotropic electromigration-induced growth on Si(1 1 0)-16 × 2 surfaces

Detailed scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy (STM and STS) studies for the effects of thermal migration and electromigration on the growth of gadolinium-silicide nanomeshes on double-domain Si(1 1 0)-16 × 2 surfaces are presented to identify the driving force for the self-organization of a perfectly ordered silicide nanomesh on Si(1 1 0). STM results clearly show that the anisotropic electromigration effect is crucial for the control of the spatial uniformity of a self-ordered silicide nanomesh on Si(1 1 0). This two-dimensional self-ordering driven by the anisotropic-electromigration-induced growth allows the sizes and positions of crossed nanowires to be precisely controlled within a variation of ±0.2 nm over a mesoscopic area, and it can be straightforwardly applied to other metals (e.g., Au and Ce) to grow a variety of highly regular silicide nanomeshes for the applications as nanoscale interconnects. Moreover, the STS results show that the anisotropic electromigration-induced growth causes the metallic horizontal nanowires to cross over the semiconducting oblique nanowires, which opens the possibility for the atomically precise bottom-up fabrication of well-defined crossbar nanoarchitectures.