Nanotechnology has received increased attention in the biological research field. The important examples are (1) the usage of nanoparticles in optical and magnetic resonance imaging;1,2 (2) the demonstration of potential application of metal nanoshells and carbon nanotubes for the treatment of tumor and cancer cells;3,4 and (3) the application of nanowire-based transistors to electrically detec...

The surface or sheath effect on core-shell nanowires plays an important role in the nanomechanical test. In the past few years, SiC nanowires have been synthesized using various methods with an uneven and uncontrollable amorphous silicon dioxide sheath. The bending Young's modulus of the SiC nanowires has scarcely been measured, and the effect of the oxide sheath has not been taken into account...

Single-crystalline cobalt silicide/SiO(x) nanocables have been grown on Co thin films on an SiO(2) layer by a self-catalysis process via vapor-liquid-solid mechanism. The nanocables consist of a core of CoSi nanowires and a silicon oxide shell with a length of several tens of micrometers. In the confined space in the oxide shell, the CoSi phase is stable and free from agglomeration in samples a...

A top-down nanofabrication approach is used to develop silicon nanowires from silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers and involves direct-write electron beam lithography (EBL), inductively coupled plasma-reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE) and a size reduction process. To achieve nanometer scale size, the crucial factors contributing to the EBL and size reduction processes are highlighted. The resulting s...

Here we report the solution-liquid-solid (SLS) synthesis of silicon (Si) nanowires. Nanowires are grown by trisilane (Si3H8) decomposition in a high boiling solvent, octacosane (C28H58) or squalane (C30H62), in the presence of either Au or Bi nanocrystals. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a colloidal synthetic route carried out in a solvent at atmospheric pressure that provides cry...

We report on the backscattering induced by sidewall roughness in silicon on insulator optical nanowires, its dependence on the waveguide geometrical and optical parameters and its impact on silicon photonic devices. In silicon ring resonators cavity-enhanced backscattering, increasing with the square of the resonator’s finesse, emerges as a severe

The concept of a nanowire solar cell with photon-harvesting shells is presented. In this architecture, organic molecules which absorb strongly in the near infrared where silicon absorbs weakly are coupled to silicon nanowires SiNWs . This enables an array of 7m-long nanowires with a diameter of 50 nm to absorb over 85% of the photons above the bandgap of silicon. The organic molecules are bonde...

Disordered arrays of silicon nanowires have been produced by the OAG technique. The UV-visible absorption spectrum of the SiNWs shows a main increase of the absorption extending in the near infrared and similar absorption than bulk crystalline silicon below 400 nm. T EMT simulation of the UV absorption of silicon nanowires predicts a main optical absorption for a nanowire orientation parallel t...

In digital X-ray sensors, pixel complexity is limited by the instabilities of amorphous silicon transistors or by the lack of homogeneity of their polycrystalline silicon counterparts. Here, we present a novel approach to the fabrication of thin-film transistors, based on the use of silicon nanowires grown in porous alumina templates. Transistors made from silicon nanowires are essentially stud...

The optical absorption in a nanowire heterostructure consisting of a crystalline silicon core surrounded by a conformal shell of amorphous silicon is studied. We show that they exhibit extremely high absorption of 95% at short wavelengths (λ < 550 nm) and a concomitant very low absorption of down to less than 2% at long wavelengths (λ > 780 nm). These results indicate that our nanowires do not ...