A comparative study of the annealing atmosphere effect on bismuth particles dedicated for silicon nanowires growth catalyst

Abstract

In this work, we report on a facile fabrication method of bismuth nanoparticles consisting of evaporation of bismuth thin layers under a controlled environment. The investigated evaporation environments are vacuum, hydrogen gas, and plasma. The effects of the fabrication parameters on bismuth microstructural and morphological properties are studied using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and x-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The parametric study demonstrates that, under the different conditions, the synthesized bismuth nanoparticles are quasi-spherical with a uniform density. Additionally, vapor–liquid-solid growth of silicon nanowires (SiNWs) catalyzed by bismuth is successfully achieved. The investigation of the effects of growth parameters shows that the density of the synthesized SiNWs was enhanced by increasing time. The SiNWs optoelectronics properties are also ameliorated in comparison to initial bismuth nanoparticles catalyst, namely the surface reflectivity and the minority carrier lifetime.