Growth of well-aligned Bi nanowire on Ag(1 1 1)

Abstract

We report the fabrication of one-dimensional (1D) Bi nanowires grown on Ag(1 1 1) with average lateral width from 9 to 20 nm by physical vapor deposition in ultra high vacuum conditions. In situ low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy analyses reveal that the preferred growth of 1D Bi nanostructures is driven by the highly anisotropic bonding in the crystallographic structure of the Bi(1 1 0) plane. The Bi nanowires grow along Bi [ 1 over(1, ̄) 0 ] direction and align with the [ 1 over(1, ̄) 0 ] directions on Ag(1 1 1). The growth of the Bi nanowires proceeds in a bilayer growth mode resulting from the layer pairing in Bi(1 1 0) which saturates the dangling bonds and lowers the total energy. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.