The present application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. 119 to Korean Patent Application No. 10-2006-137069 (filed on Dec. 28, 2006) and 10-2007-0051236 (filed on May 28, 2007), which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.
The present invention relates to a method for manufacturing a nanowire using stress-induced growth and, more particularly, to a method for manufacturing single-crystalline nanowire using compressive stress induced when heat treatment is performed on deposited thin film.
Many researches have been made for semimetallic bismuth (Bi) due to advantageous transport properties thereof, such as anisotropic Fermi surface, long mean free path l, and small effective mass m*. Also, Bi has been receiving attention for understanding new physical phenomenon because finite size effect and semimetal-semiconductor phase transition were observed in Bi nanowire having diameter of 50 nm. Finite size effect is a phenomenon that the free path of a carrier is limited by the size of nanowire, and the semimetal-semiconductor phase transition is quantum confinement effect.
Although it is essential to manufacture single-crystalline nanowire for analyzing the characteristics of Bi nanowire, nanowire growth has been limited because it is difficult to have single crystallinity. Furthermore, not many methods for growing Bi nanowire have been known.
As known, BixTe1-x, composition of semimetallic Bi and semiconductor Te, has large mass, and can reduce thermal conductivity due to Van der Waals bonding between Bi and Te and covalent bonding between Te atoms. Accordingly, BixTe1-x can increase figure of merit (ZT). Owing to such advantageous characteristics thereof, BxTe1-x has been receiving attention as thermal conductive material.
By manufacturing nanowire using BxTe1-x which is a semiconductor material, it is possible to control electrical density of state. Also, it is possible to control Seebeck coefficient that influences thermoelectric effect if the shape and peak position of an energy level density function match to the Fermi level. And BixTe1-x nanowire can sustain electric conductivity at high level by increasing electron-mobility through quantum confinement effects. Therefore, it is possible to obtain comparatively large ZT value by overcoming the limitation of bulk thermoelectric material.
Since single-crystalline nanowire is generally manufactured at high temperature, a typical method of manufacturing single-crystalline nanowire cannot be used for growing a Bi nanowire that has comparatively low melting point, for example, 271.3° C. In order to manufacture BixTe1-x nanowire, it is necessary to grow the alloy of Bi and Te together instead of growing single material. Therefore, a solvent with necessary materials melted together was used to grow BixTe1-x nanowire. As a method for manufacturing BixTe1-x nanowire according to the related art, template-assisted method, solution-phase method, hydrothermal method, and solve-thermal method were introduced. However, template-assisted method has a difficulty for preparing templates. The other methods need starting materials and must perform complicated processes. Furthermore, it is necessary to remove template and residual chemical materials from nanowire surface. Also, it is difficult to form various patterns due to low aspect ratio when a module is manufactured based on the above methods. Most of all, there is a limitation to obtain advantageous properties of Bi and BixTe1-x because Bi nanowire or BixTe1-x nanowire is formed as polycrystalline if the Bi nano wire or the BixTe1-x nanowire is manufactured by the above methods.
The present invention is proposed in order to provide a method for manufacturing single-crystalline nanowire without performing process for preparing templates or catalysts or without starting materials and phase transition of a base material to liquid or gaseous state.
According to the present invention, the method for manufacturing nanowire using compressive stress, includes:
providing a substrate;
forming thin film on the substrate, wherein the film is made of material having more than 2×10−6/° C. of thermal expansion coefficient difference from the substrate;
inducing tensile stress due to the thermal expansion coefficient difference between the thin film and the substrate by performing heat treatment on the substrate with the thin film formed; and
growing single crystalline nanowire of the material by inducing compressive stress at the thin film by cooling down the substrate.
The present invention uses difference between the thermal expansion coefficient of substrate and that of thin film deposited on the substrate. If the thermal expansion coefficient of the thin film is larger than that of the substrate, the thin film receives tensile stress when the substrate is heated. If the substrate coated with the thin film is cooled down after heating, the thin film receives compressive stress which is greater than that applied to the substrate because the thin film has thermal expansion coefficient larger than that of the substrate. The compressive stress operates as thermodynamic driving force that grows single crystalline nanowire from the thin film. As well as the thermal expansion coefficient difference, other factors may operate as the driving force that grows nanowire. For example, it is expected that strain caused by lattice mismatch may operate as the driving force. However, the stress generated by the difference of thermal expansion coefficients operates as the largest driving force among the stresses caused by other factors. The present invention utilizes this phenomenon.
Since the stress generated by the difference of the thermal expansion coefficients is released in a thickness direction of the thin film and the substrate if the thin film and the substrate are thick, the thickness of the thin film becomes a major variable. An intermediate layer may be formed between the substrate and the thin film because the substrate is excessively thicker than the thin film in general. Therefore, another embodiment has been proposed in order to provide a method for manufacturing nanowire as follows.
providing a substrate with an intermediate layer formed thereon;
forming thin film on the intermediate layer, wherein the thin film made of material having more than 2×10−6/° C. of thermal expansion coefficient difference from the intermediate layer;
inducing tensile stress due to the thermal expansion coefficient difference between the thin film and the substrate by performing a heat treatment on the substrate with the thin film formed; and
growing single crystalline nanowire of the material by inducing compressive stress at the thin film through cooling of the substrate.
Here, the thermal expansion coefficient difference between the substrate and the thin film may not be required to be large. However, the thermal expansion coefficient difference between the substrate and the intermediate layer should be large. The substrate may be a silicon substrate, and the intermediate layer may be an oxide layer.
Material consisting the thin film itself is the material for producing nanowire. That is, the thin film may be made of any material that can be grown as single crystalline nanowire by driving force provided as compressive stress. Since thermoelectric materials are the main concern in the present invention, the thin film made of bismuth or a binary alloy including bismuth is particularly preferred. The binary alloy may be formed of bismuth with one of Te, Sb, and Se. The alloy forms in a formation of BixA1-z (A=Te, Sb, Se). Here, x preferably is 0.33 to 0.55. However, the present invention is not limited to the materials described above.
Although the method for depositing thin film is not limited to specific one, widely used sputtering is generally preferable. If the thin film material is a binary alloy, sputtering using the ally target or co-sputtering using single targets is preferable.
If the substrate is cooled down while performing sputtering, the grain size of thin film becomes smaller. As a result, it is possible to grow nanowire therefrom with smaller diameter.
Here, the intermediate layer should have sufficient thickness that can provide compressive stress for forming nanowire. Preferably the thickness of the intermediate layer is 3000 to 5000 Å. The thickness of the thin film is preferably limited to 10 nm to 4 μm. If the thickness of the thin film is thinner than 10 nm, the thin film may not have sufficient amount of material for growing nanowire. If the thickness of the thin film is thicker than 4 μm, the compressive stress of the intermediate layer becomes weaker than that required to grow nanowire and accordingly nanowire may not be grown enough.
As the heat treatment of the thin film, annealing at 100 to 1000° C. for 0.5 to 15 hours is preferable. If the temperature for the heat treatment is lower than 100° C., the thermal driving force is not provided to grow a nanowire. On the contrary, if the temperature is higher than 1000° C., the materials including the substrate can be damaged. If the annealing time is shorter than 0.5 hour, nanowire is not sufficiently grown. That is, 0.5 hour of annealing is insufficient to provide the thermodynamic driving force. As the thermal processing time increases, the thin film expands more, thereby generating more tensile stress. However, even if the annealing is performed longer than 15 hours, the stress is not generated any more.
As described above, nanowire is grown upwardly from the substrate. However, the growing direction may be controlled. If a barrier layer is deposited on the thin film to hider the nanowire from growing, the nanowire cannot be grown upwardly. In order to release compressive stress, the nanowire grows in lateral direction. The barrier layer is preferably made of SiO2, Cr or W, although not limited thereto.
An oxide layer may be formed on the nanowire because the grown nanowire reacts with oxygen in the atmosphere. Therefore, a process for removing the oxide layer formed on the grown nanowire may be further performed for manufacturing a thermoelectric module using nanowire. Here, plasma etching is preferable. If the barrier layer is made of Cr in the method of manufacturing nanowire in lateral direction using the barrier layer, the nanowire grown in the lateral direction may be coupled to an electrode while heat treatment is performed. In this case, it is possible to fabricate the thermoelectric module without performing the process of removing oxide layer.
According to the manufacturing method for nanowire using compressive stress, it is not necessary to perform template preparing or catalyst preparing to grow single-crystalline nanowire. Furthermore, it is possible to grow single-crystalline nanowire with superior crystallinity without using starting material or hetero material or without phase transition to liquid state or gaseous state.
The single crystalline nanowire manufactured according to the present embodiment can be applied to various fields using thermoelectric modules, such as power generators for space, heaters, aeronautical heat controllers, military infrared IR detectors, missile guide circuit coolers, medical thermostats, and blood depositing devices.
Although the method of the present invention using compressive stress is particularly suitable for thermoelectric materials like Bi and BixTe1-x it is not limited thereto. Therefore, various composition ratios of AxB1-x single crystalline nanowire can be grown with superior crystallinity.
Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.
Then, thin film 50 is formed on the oxide layer 30 through sputtering as shown in a diagram b) of
Hereinafter, the apparatus for manufacturing single-crystalline nanowire and heat treatment will be described. The apparatus includes a reaction chamber for performing heat treatment on the substrate 10 with the thin film 50 formed on the oxide layer 30.
As shown in
Then, the substrate 10 was heated with the alumina boat 120 by the heat generated from the heater. Here, it is preferable to maintain the inside of the reaction chamber 100 at 10−2 Torr to 10−8 Torr. If the inside of the reaction chamber 100 is sustained below 10−2 Torr, an oxide layer may be formed on the surface of nanowire. More preferably, the inside of the reaction chamber 100 is sustained at 10−7 Torr. By heating the substrate placed on the alumina boat 120 in vacuum state, tensile stress was induced at thin film 50 on the substrate 10 as shown in a diagram c) of
After finishing the heat treatment, the thin film 50 was cooled to room temperature.
At the initial stage of cooling process, compressive stress was applied to thin film 50 because the substrate and the thin film tries to deform to the original shapes. Such compressive stress operates as a thermodynamic driving force for nanowire growth in the cooling process. Here, most of single-crystalline nanowire 70 was grown as shown in a diagram d) of
As described above, expanded Bi or BixTe1-x thin film was contracted while the substrate with Bi or BixTe1-x thin film formed on the oxide layer was cooled to room temperature after the heat treatment. Due to the contraction of the expanded Bi or BixTe1-x thin film, the compressive stress operates as thermodynamic driving force and the thermodynamic driving force makes Bi or BixTe1-x single crystalline nanowire growing. Accordingly, Bi or BixTe1-x single crystalline nanowire was manufactured.
In case of BixTe1-x thin film instead of Bi thin film, co-sputtering was performed. The heat treatment was performed at 350° C. Here, the composition of the BixTe1-x thin film can be controlled by changing rf power when Bi and Te are deposited. Since composition of BixTe1-x nanowire is dependent to composition of BixTe1-x thin film, BixTe1-x nanowire of specific composition can be grown by controlling the composition of BxTe1-x thin film.
Also, the diagrams show that the diameter of Bi nanowire is reduced to 1.2 μm in diagram e), 450 nm in diagram f), 140 nm in diagram g), and 98 nm in diagram h), as the size of grain is reduced to 700 nm in diagram a), 125 nm in diagram b), 107 nm in diagram c), and 100 nm in diagram d).
As shown in the graph, crystallization is not clearly shown before the heat treatment, that is, before nanowire was grown. However, crystallization is clearly shown in a direction of (00l) plane where l is an integer number after the heat treatment, that is, after nanowire was grown.
Referring to
The dark field image and diagram g) show that the crystal direction of thin film is [00l]. It is matched with the X-ray analysis.
The diagrams d) and h) of
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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10-2006-0137069 | Dec 2006 | KR | national |
10-2007-0051236 | May 2007 | KR | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
---|---|---|---|---|
PCT/KR07/06944 | 12/28/2006 | WO | 00 | 2/26/2008 |