Growth competition during glancing angle deposition of nanorod honeycomb arrays

Arrays of Ta nanorods were grown by glancing angle deposition (GLAD) onto honeycomb Cr nanodot patterns that were evaporated onto Si substrates through a self-assembled monolayer of Si O 2 nanospheres. Statistical size analyses from arrays of rods with variable average length l and width w , with 210 nm ⩽ l ⩽ 650 nm and 109 nm ⩽ w ⩽ 304 nm , show that the distribution in w broadens with increasing l and decreasing w , but remains approximately constant with a fixed l ∕ w ratio. This is attributed to an intercolumnar growth competition that exacerbates nanorod size fluctuations but scales with rod size. These results suggest that the overall nanostructure shapes during low-temperature GLAD are independent of material-specific length scales and are, therefore, completely controlled by the geometric shadowing.