Scientists in Taiwan have used bulk metals to grow silicon nanowires.
Preparation of the metal catalysts used to synthesise Si nanowires normally involves multi-step procedures and suffers from many processing limitations. Now a team led by Hsing-Yu Tuan at National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, have demonstrated that commercially available bulk metals can act as reuseable catalysts to seed Si nanowire synthesis in supercritical benzene. Eight different metals were explored as potential catalysts. Hsing-Yu Tuan and the team claim that this alternative metal-seeded synthetic protocol could be used to prepare versatile Si nanowires/metal architectures for advanced applications.
Interested to know more? Read the full article for free until 5th September: F-W Yuan, H-J Yang and H-Y Tuan, J. Mater. Chem., 2011, DOI: 10.1039/c1jm11956g
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