A novel approach to silicon-nanowire-assisted growth of high-purity, single-crystalline beta-Si3N4 nanowires

摘要

Bundles of single-crystalline beta-Si3N4 nanowires with high purity are successfully synthesized using a simple CVD process with silicon nanowire(SiNW)-assisted growth. The beta-Si3N4 NWs obtained have a small diameter of similar to 30 nm, a single-crystalline structure with [100] or [101] direction, and a thin oxide shell. The photoluminescence and Raman scattering spectra confirm the good crystalline structure. The weak blue-shift of the peaks in Raman scattering compared to bulk beta-Si3N4 is attributed to the phonon confinement effect or laser heating during the measurements. Finally, a possible SiNWs template-assisted growth model is suggested.