Self-organized silicide nanostructures at silicon surfaces

Nanotechnology and nano engineering research is at its fastest pace in the twenty first century. For inventing a novel nanodevice, the fabrication of the same is the very first step. The book provides an in-depth insight into the fundamental aspects of fabrication of nanostructures namely nanodots, nanowires and investigation of their morphology and electronic properties at nanoscale. Molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) is one of the best techniques to grow epitaxial nanostructures with extreme control in ultrahigh vacuum. Self-organized cobalt disilicide nanostructures have been grown on silicon surfaces of different crystallographic orientation in MBE. 'Endotaxy' is a special type of 'epitaxy', in which the growth of nanostructure occurs both on the substrate's surface as well as into the surface. We have discovered for the first time that the 'endotaxial' cobalt disilicide nanodots transform their shape into nanowires as they grow in size at a critical dimension on Si(100) surfaces, a phenomenon known as shape transition. The well-ordered silicide nanowires grow on Si(110). The surface defects have been controlled to fabricate nanostructures of uniform morphology on Si(111) surfaces.