Growth of large aspect ratio AuAg bimetallic nanowires on Si(110) substrate

Large aspect ratio bimetallic nanowire structures comprise potential applications in areas such as higher catalytic activity and surface Raman enhancement spectroscopy (SERS) substrates. By using the highly anisotropic ultra-clean Si(110) surface and with initial growth of sub monolayer (ML) Ag on such surface, a high aspect ratio AuAg bimetallic nanostructures can be formed. We report on the formation of large aspect ratio (>7.2 ± 0.8) AuAg nanowires on ultra-clean Si(110) surfaces using 0.5 ML Ag followed by 3.0 ML Au using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) at a growth temperature of 300 °C. Under similar growth conditions without pre-deposition of Ag and only with deposition of 3.0 ML of Au consequences smaller aspect ratio (2.1 ± 0.1) monometallic Au nanostructures. The enhancement in aspect ratio of the nanostructures is attributed to the formation of one dimensional Ag layer (prior to Au growth) and Au-Ag bimetallic intermixing at elevated temperature. Considering deposition of 3.0 ML Au, a regime of substrate temperature ≈ 270–330 °C is found to be optimum to growth some of high aspect ratio (>25.0) AuAg nanowires as well. Exterior of this regime, at lower temperature due to low mobility of the ad-atoms and at higher temperature due to probable inter-diffusion of Ag, such extremely high aspect ratio AuAg nanowires found to be infrequent to grow. For growth at substrate temperature 300 °C, mean aspect ratio of the AuAg nanostructures is gradually increased in accordance with Au thickness up to 3.0 ML due to preferential accumulation of ad-atoms (Au, Ag) along Si〈11¯0〉 and thereafter reduces for adequate accumulation along Si〈001〉.