Structures of Si and Ge nanowires in the sub-nanometer range
Abstract
We report an ab-initio investigation of several possible Si and Ge pristine nanowires with diameters between 0.5 and 1.2 nm. We considered nanowires based on the diamond structure, high-density bulk structures, and fullerene-like structures. We find that the diamond structure nanowires are unstable for diameters smaller than 1 nm, and undergo considerable structural transformations towards amorphous-like wires. Such instability is consistent with a continuum model that predicts, for both Si and Ge, a stability crossover between diamond and high-density-structure nanowires for diameters smaller than 1 nm. For diameters between 0.8 nm and 1 nm, filled-fullerene wires are the most stable ones. For even smaller diameters (d~0.5 nm), we find that a simple hexagonal structure is particularly stable for both Si and Ge.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0408546,
title = {Structures of Si and Ge nanowires in the sub-nanometer range},
author = {Ricardo Kagimura and Ricardo W. Nunes and Helio Chacham},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0408546},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
4 pages (in journal two column format), 4 figures, submitted for publication