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A breakthrough in nanowire synthesis was achieved by discovering a new form of highly dense silicon and mastering a new scalable catalyst-free etching process to produce ultra-small silicon nanowires from two to five nanometers in diameter.
For a human-scale benchmark, we could say that each person's hair is 60 nanometers wide.
About 10 years ago, there was an unusual result from an experiment with silicon wafers. The material was different from the one they were intended to produce.
The substance was found to be silicon with a "very, very small" wire-like nanostructure. They were able to reproduce the new material, but when they tried to improve the synthesis process, the nanowires did not grow, and they had to study the synthesis mechanism and the atomic-scale structure and properties of the material.
The material had a highly compressed structure, reduced by 10% to 20% compared to normal silicon, which is normally not stable in such a compressed state.
Through computational analysis and modeling, it could be shown that, despite the unusual properties, the new material was a form of silicon with a very thin layer of oxide on top, which probably helped maintain compression.
One of the reasons silicon is widely used as a semiconductor in microelectronics, such as computer chips, integrated circuits, transistors, silicon diodes and liquid crystal displays, is that it is cheap and abundant. According to the Royal Society of Chemistry, it is the second most abundant element in the earth's crust after oxygen, but it is not found in its pure, uncombined state in nature. It can be found in sand, quartz, flint, granite, mica and clay, among other rocks and minerals.
However, traditional silicon cannot withstand high temperatures and is therefore limited to lower power applications. It has a usable bandgap of 1.11 electron volts (the usable bandgap determines the energy required for electrons in the semiconductor material to conduct electricity when stimulated by external sources).
The new material has an ultra-wide usable bandgap of 4.16 eV, a world record. The ultra-wide band implies that the material needs larger stimuli to conduct electricity, but can operate at high power, high temperature and high frequencies. Silicon nanowires produced from this new material will be suitable for power electronic devices, transistors, diodes and LEDs.
Unlike normal silicon, the new material is highly resistant to oxidation. It is also photoluminescent, capable of emitting blue and purple light, which can be used for ultraviolet illumination and in blue light diodes.
A new method has also been created to produce silicon nanowires, called chemical vapor etching, which removes material rather than forming crystals. As a result, they can make nanowires that are 10 to 20 times smaller than silicon nanowires in commercial use today.
Previously known nanowire synthesis processes use catalyst particles to grow silicon crystals.
The new silicon nanowires can improve lithium-ion batteries. In addition, adding some selected materials such as phosphorus or nitrogen (a technique called doping) can lead to other interesting properties and enable other applications.