Nanomanufacturing Strategy for Aligned Assembly of Nanowire Arrays

The work reported here concerns a proposed nanomanufacturing strategy to assemble aligned quasi-one-dimensional nanostructure arrays with intrinsic and concurrent control over the resultant number, pitch, and linewidth. For the first time, a standard lithography and crystallographic etching approach have been combined to synthesize periodic, sublithographic, and line edge roughness (LER)-free surface arrays for selective conjugation of nanowires. Key experimental modules have been developed, including the formation of LER-free substrate arrays, formation of periodically dissimilar surfaces, selective conjugation of nanowires, and stamping transfer of nanowire arrays. In particular, successful assembly of Si nanowires onto periodic Si/SiO (x) surfaces and subsequent transfer of the resultant aligned Si nanowire arrays onto a different substrate surface have been repeatedly demonstrated. The dependences and probability of nanowire aligned assembly have also been examined. The proposed strategy is based on a wafer-scale and very large-scale integration (VLSI)-compatible philosophy, and alignment to pre-existing features on the target substrate is also inherently allowed as a side benefit. Besides, LER-free features could be created, which arguably enables extreme linewidth scaling with suppressed variations.