Growth of Nanowires by High-Temperature Glancing Angle Deposition

We have demonstrated that nanowires of various metals, Ge, and Ga 2 O 3 can be grown by high-temperature glancing angle deposition (HT-GLAD). The nanowires of metals including Al, Cu, Ag, Au, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, and Zn are self-catalyzed, while the nanowires of other materials such as Ge and Ga 2 O 3 are catalyzed by Au nanoparticles. However, once the nanowires start to grow, the growth modes of the HT-GLAD nanowires are fundamentally the same, i.e., nanowires with uniform diameter grow only when the vapor is incident at a very high glancing angle and reach a length larger than 1--8 μm even though the number of deposited atoms corresponds to the average thickness of 20--30 nm. This suggests that there is a universal growth mechanism for the nanowires grown by HT-GLAD.