Based on the idea of a catalytic approach, antimony nanowires were grown with diameters of about 20 nm and lengths of a few micrometers.

Therefore an intense focused Ga ion beam was used to form catalytic nanoparticles alloyed by the constituents of the growing nanowire in situ, eliminating the usual requirement of pre-patterning quantum sized catalyst droplets. These FIB generated Sb nanowires were integrated in humidity sensors as well as a CMOS compatible pH sensor.

These above studies illustrate the potential of this approach for synthesis of nanowires in room temperature ambient without using a gas-type source. We emphasize that our approach should not be limited solely to the materials discussed here – other sources of the ion beam as well as heating of the sample during FIB processing should extend this method to other materials thereby opening the door to cheaper and faster commercialization and being compatible with on-chip microelectronics.

Furthermore we present an approach for Fib synthesis of free-standing graphite nanosheets with a thickness of about 40 nm oriented parallel to the scanning Fib. At a substrate temperature of 600°C a self assembled free standing carbon nanosheet was formed. An SEM video shows the assembling of this carbon nanosheet in situ and in real-time. Such carbon nanosheets appears to by crystalline and shows effective photoluminescence at telecommunication wavelength.

Finally we present an approach for Fib induced synthesis of free-standing Ge nano-webs with a thickness down to 20nm and luminescence in the near-infrared region. FIB exposure of Ge and subsequent annealing in a rapid thermal processing system leads to the formation of Ge nanowebs. The resulting pattern were investigated by SEM, SIMS and AFM imaging. The photoluminescence- and raman-properties of the resulting structures were investigated with a WITec alpha300 and an excitation wavelength of 532nm.