Cover Picture: Photolithographic Route to the Fabrication of Micro/Nanowires of III–V Semiconductors (Adv. Funct. Mater. 1/2005)

Abstract

AbstractThe cover shows a patterned assembly of GaAs nanowires with their ends tethered to a bulk single‐crystal wafer as described on p. 30 by Rogers and co‐workers. These wires, which have triangular cross‐sections, were fabricated via a top–down process that combines photolithography and anisotropic chemical etching.Nano/microwires of semiconducting materials (e.g., GaAs and InP) with triangular cross‐sections can be fabricated by “top–down” approaches that combine lithography of high‐quality bulk wafers (using either traditional photolithography or phase‐shift optical lithography) with anisotropic chemical etching. This method gives good control over the lateral dimensions, lengths, and morphologies of free‐standing wires. The behaviors of many different resist layers and etching chemistries are presented. It is shown how wire arrays with highly ordered alignments can be transfer printed onto plastic substrates. This “top–down” approach provides a simple, effective, and versatile way of generating high‐quality single‐crystalline wires of various compound semiconductors. The resultant wires and wire arrays have potential applications in electronics, optics, optoelectronics, and sensing.