Flow assisted synthesis of highly ordered silica nanowire arrays

Silica nanowires were synthesized through a self-supplied vapor–liquid–solid (VLS) mechanism. Unlike randomly entangled nanowires on the substrate, highly ordered nanowire arrays have been successfully fabricated using a sandwich-like configuration to define and enhance the local gas-flow. As-synthesized nanowires were characterized to be amorphous silicon dioxide with Au as catalysts. The role of the sandwich-like structure and the effect of gas-flow on the alignment of silica nanowires are demonstrated.