In-fiber semiconductor filament arrays.
We report a novel physical phenomenon in which a cylindrical shell undergoing a scaling process evolves into an ordered array of filaments upon reaching a characteristic thickness. We observe that the tendency to breakup is related to the material viscosity in a manner reminiscent of capillary instability. However, unlike the classical breakup of a fluid cylinder into droplets, the structural evolution in our system occurs exclusively in the cross sectional plane while uniformity is maintained in the axial direction. We propose a fluid front instability mechanism to account for the observed phenomena. The fleeting evolution of fluid breakup from a thin film to a filament array is captured in the frozen state by a thermal drawing process which results in extended lengths of solid sub-100 nm filaments encapsulated within a polymer fiber. Hundreds of glassy semiconductor filament arrays are precisely oriented within a polymer fiber matrix making electrical connections trivial. This approach offers unique opportunities for fabrication of nanometer scale devices of unprecedented lengths allowing simplified access and connectivity.
Deng
D S
DS
Research Laboratory of Electronics, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
Orf
N D
ND
Abouraddy
A F
AF
Stolyarov
A M
AM
Joannopoulos
J D
JD
Stone
H A
HA
Fink
Y
Y