Synthesis, characterizations, and applications of carbon nanotubes and silicon nanowires

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have received great attention because of their unique structure and promising applications in microelectronic devices such as field electron emitters. Silicon nanowires (SiNWs) are also very popular because Si is a well established electronic material. This thesis will present my effort on synthesis, characterizations, and applications of CNTs and SiNWs by thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method.;For CNTs growth, block copolymer micelles were used as a template to create large area arrays of metal nanoclusters as catalysts for patterned arrays, and Fe/Al/Fe sandwich film on single crystal magnesium oxide (MgO) substrate was used as the catalyst for growth of long length aligned CNTs by CVD. The factors that affect the structure and length of CNTs have been investigated.;CNTs were also grown on etched Si substrate by PECVD method. Continuous dropwise condensation was achieved on a biomimetic two-tier texture with short CNTs deposited on micromachined pillars. Superhydrophobic condensation model was studied.;For SiNWs growth, hydrogen gold tetrachloride was uniformly mixed into the salt and decomposed into gold nanoparticles at the growth temperature and acted as the catalyst particles to start the growth of Si nanowires. The as-grown Si nanowires are about 70--90 nm in diameter and up to 200 micrometers long. The salt was completely removed by water rinse after growth.;Field emission of aligned CNTs grown on Si substrates and SiNWs on Si substrates and carbon clothes has been studied. A post growth annealing procedure has been found to drastically improve the field emission performance of these CNTs and SiNWs.