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Institute
Semiconductor nanowires, also called nanorods or nanowhiskers, are of particular interest for various applications in nanotechnology. Especially, germanium as a CMOS compatible material with its good electronic properties has gained renewed interest in recent years due to the availability of modern gate dielectrics. The present work deals with the vapor-liquid-solid growth of germanium nanowires and their characterization. The Growth has been carried out by means of molecular beam epitaxy using differently oriented germanium and silicon substrates whereas gold has been used to create metal catalyst droplets with radii of typically 100 nm and below. All stages from the substrate preparation to the final growth have been investigated in the frame of this work to find significant control parameters that influence the growth result. The droplet formation by means of gold evaporation onto the heated substrates has been investigated extensively on different substrates and for different surface preparations to identify parameters that are crucial for the resulting size distribution. Thereby sticking effects of the droplet circumference turned out to influence the radius distribution significantly. Germanium nanowires have been observed to grow preferentially along the <011> crystallographic directions on all utilized substrate orientations leading to defined possible inclinations of the wires with respect to the substrate normal. In contrast to the faceting known from silicon wires, the sidewalls mainly exhibit four flat {111} facets whereas the tip is roof shaped consisting of another two {111} facets. Different models which describe the inclined growth are presented and discussed. Furthermore, the material transport during the growth has been investigated. The nanowire length was found to be up to eight times larger than the nominal layer thickness according to the total amount of deposited germanium which is explained by surface diffusion towards the nanowires. The diffusion dominated growth regime was confirmed by length-radius-plot showing a decrease of the nanowire length at increasing radii. A temperature dependent diffusion model has been utilized to describe the observed nanowire length as a function of the substrate temperature. Beside conventional nanowires, so-called in-plane nanowires which grow along the substrate surface have been studied. Like their vertically growing counterparts, they also tend to grow along <011> in-plane directions which is particularly distinct on Ge(011) substrates. However, the fraction of nanowires which are aligned along <011> is influenced by substrate imperfections which was intentionally affected by means of wet-chemical substrate preparation. In addition to the nanowire growth, techniques for selective catalyst removal as well as for nanowire embedding in an insulating, transparent matrix have been established which can be important prerequisites for further nanowire processing in terms of electric or optoelectronic applications.