Growth of single-crystalline cobalt silicide nanowires with excellent physical properties

Abstract

With the miniaturization of electron devices, the minuscule structures are important to state-of-the-art science and technology. Therefore, the growth methods and properties of nanomaterials have been extensively studied recently. Here, we use chemical vapor transport (CVT) methods to synthesize single-crystalline cobalt silicide nanowires (NWs) by using (CoCl(2)center dot 6H(2)O) as a single-source precursor. By changing reaction temperature and ambient pressure, we can obtain different morphology of cobalt silicide NWs under the appropriate concentration of silicon and cobalt. The field emission measurement of CoSi NWs shows low turn-on field (5.02 V/mu m) and it is outstanding for magnetic properties that differ from the bulk CoSi. The CoSi nanowires with different diameters have diversemagnetic saturation (Ms) and coercive force (Hc). (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3643007]