Self-organization of mesoscopically ordered parallel Gd-silicide nanowire arrays on a Si(110)-16×2 surface: A massively parallel active architecture

A perfect self-organization of large-area, highly regular parallel arrays, consisting of uniformly spaced, epitaxial Gd-silicide nanowires with an identical width and a typical periodicity as small as ∼4 nm and ∼7.2 nm, respectively, and an average length exceeding 1 μm, has been achieved through the heteroepitaxial growth of Gd silicides on a Si(110)-16×2 surface. Scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy studies clearly show that each metallic Gd-silicide nanowire consists of three atomically precise chain structures with a peculiar charge arrangement of alternating filled and empty states. This unique, massively parallel active architecture of well-ordered Gd-silicide NWs with exotic electronic properties can be exploited in nanoelectronic devices.