Fabrication of Nanowires Using Glancing Angle Deposition

Abstract

This paper introduces the fabrication of wafer-long nanowires using glancing angle deposition (GLAD). GLAD is an advanced physical vapor deposition technique, and it has the unique advantage of creating three-dimensional nanofeature arrays, compared to conventional top-down nanofabrication techniques. Various nanofeatures created by GLAD have been reported, including pillars, springs, chevrons, ribbons, and those structures as templates for creating nanoporous membranes; this paper fills the gap by presenting the creation of nanowires by GLAD. This paper describes the fabrication process by introducing the seeding scheme of corrals. The seed design for GLAD adopts the design rules of corrals of line seeds, and the GLAD parameters are determined by the design of the corrals of line seeds. In the experiment, conventional photolithography is used for creating micro-level widths and heights and wafer-length of line seed corrals. Two GLAD sessions with the target material for the nanowires and the mask material are deposited on the substrate in sequence with different azimuth angles; the nanowires are obtainable by anisotropic etching and removal of the sacrificial layer of corrals of line seeds. The design of the corrals of line seeds and the control of the size of the nanowires are discussed. The nanowires created are potentially applied in sensing applications, for example, the palladium or platinum nanowires can be used for hydrogen sensing.