Another application is the use of this emitter as an active electrode supplying highly reducing electrons into solutions. A very small amount of metal-salt solutions is dripped onto the nc-Si emitter surface, and the emitter is driven without using any counter electrodes. After the emitter operation, thin metal (Cu, Ni, Co, and so on) and elemental semiconductors (Si and Ge) films are uniformly deposited on the emitting surface. Spectroscopic surface and compositional analyses indicate that there are no significant contaminations in deposited thin films. The implication is that ballistic hot electrons injected into solutions with appropriate kinetic energies induce preferential reduction of positive ions in solutions with no by-products followed by atom migration, nuclei formation, and the subsequent thin film growth. The availability of this technique for depositing thin SiGe films is also demonstrated by using a mixture solution. When patterned fine emission windows are formed on the emitter surface, metal and semiconductor wires array are directly deposited in parallel. |
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CITATIONS
Cited by 1 scholarly publication.
Silicon
Electrodes
Thin film deposition
Thin films
Lithography
Metals
Germanium