Metal silicide nanowires

Abstract

The growth, properties and applications of metal silicide nanowires (NWs) have been extensively investigated. The investigations have led to significant advance in the understanding of one-dimensional (1D) metal silicide systems. For example, CoSi is paramagnetic in bulk form, but ferromagnetic in NW geometry. In addition, the helimagnetic phase and skyrmion state in MnSi are stabilized by NW morphology. The influencing factors on the growth of silicide phase have been elucidated for Ni-Si, Pt-Si, and Mn-Si systems. Promising results were obtained for spintronics, non-volatile memories, field emitter, magnetoresistive sensor, thermoelectric generator and solar cells. However, the main thrust has been in microelectronic devices and integrated circuits. Transistors of world-record small size have been fabricated. Reconfigurable Si NW transistors, dually active Si NW transistors and circuits with equal electron and hole transport have been demonstrated. Furthermore, multifunctional devices and logic gates with undoped Si NWs were reported. It is foreseen that practical applications will be realized in the near future. (C) 2015 The Japan Society of Applied Physics