Amorphous silicon nanotubes

Abstract

In the following, the attention will be focused on the silicon nanotube (SiNTs) that is a highly desired form of silicon for its fundamental role in the miniaturization trend of the electronic devices. After a description of the properties and applications of SiNTs and their fabrication methods, the attention will be focused on chemical vapour deposition (CVD) template synthesis that is the most usual synthetic method for this material. Then, galvanic template synthesis will be described as a general method for the fabrication of different metals and oxides nanostructures, therefore the use of this technique for synthesizing SiNTs will be detailed. Characterization methods will be also described, confirming that the template galvanic synthesis is a valuable tool for fabricating SiNTs because it has be found to be a very simple and cheap route in comparison with the other techniques. In addition, it is an easy scalable process that is the major advantage in light of industrial production.