Growth of gallium oxide nanowires on a gold coated silicon dioxide wafer

Gallium oxide is a likely wide bandgap semiconductor with many potential applications. To understand the characteristics of this material, we use the vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) growth technique to synthesize gallium oxide nanowires. Such growth is dependent on numerous initial conditions, such as thickness of the metallic catalyst coating (gold) on the silicon wafer substrate. Precise control of these initial conditions has proven to be very difficult. We believe gallium oxide nanowire growth should be directly correlated with the thickness of gold coating on the substrate but our results to date have been inconclusive. More work is required to determine the relationship between gallium oxide nanowire yield and gold coating thickness.