Nanoscale arrays of antimony telluride single crystals by selective chemical vapor deposition

Arrays of individual single nanocrystals of Sb2Te3 have been formed using selective chemical vapor deposition (CVD) from a single source precursor. Crystals are self-assembled reproducibly in confined spaces of 100 nm diameter with pitch down to 500 nm. The distribution of crystallite sizes across the arrays is very narrow (standard deviation of 15%) and is affected by both the hole diameter and the array pitch. The preferred growth of the crystals in the <1 1 0> orientation along the diagonal of the square holes strongly indicates that the diffusion of adatoms results in a near thermodynamic equilibrium growth mechanism of the nuclei. A clear relationship between electrical resistivity and selectivity is established across a range of metal selenides and tellurides, showing that conductive materials result in more selective growth and suggesting that electron donation is of critical importance for selective deposition.