Stan Guthrie's Research

The universe at the nanometer scale can be a place of incredible beauty, as seen in the above image from our scanning electron microscope (SEM). Even though nanowires are smaller in diameter than the wavelength of visible light, we can still "see" them in an optical microscope, and, though we lose the detail of an SEM image, the result is often a beautiful rainbow of color and fireworks of star-like light, below.

These systems are grown in a custom-built hot-wall chemical vapor deposition system (HW-CVD) which I designed, constructed, and operate, shown below.

Once the nanowires are grown, we are very interested to learn their electrical properties, so we define metallic (Ni-Au) leads to them so we can measure how they conduct electricity.

The above view is an optical image of a NW with leads defined with the electron beam lithographic process. The NW is on the right.

The above view is an e-beam image of a NW with leads defined with the optical lithographic process. The NW is in the center.

The results of some of the above research are represented by the following papers:

"Electrical Characterization of Single GaN Nanowires", Nanotechnology 16 (2005).

"Comparison of Laser-Ablation and Hot-Wall Chemical Vapor Deposition Techniques for Nanowire Fabrication" (submitted).