Growth study of silicon nanowires by electron microscopies

We present a method that allows the synthesis of silicon nanowires (Si NWs) using Au or Ga as catalyst solvent in a scanning electron microscopy. The method is based on localized joule heating of tungsten wires to activate vapor–liquid–solid Si nanowire synthesis. Directly from scanning electron microscopy images we observe two different growth mechanisms for each catalyst solvent (Au and Ga). Since the conductive tungsten wires can be elaborated by focused ion beam induced deposition on 50-nm-thick Si3N4 membranes, we will show that transmission electron microscopy characterizations can be deduced from as-deposited .silicon nanowires.