The paper “Tailoring the crystal growth of quartz on silicon for patterning epitaxial piezoelectric films” has been recently published in the journal Nanoscale Advances.
This study has been carried out in collaboration with NanoChemLab from Montpellier, France. Congratulations to Qianzhe Zhang and Martí Gich for being authors of this work!
Chiral habit selection on nanostructured epitaxial quartz films
Adrián Carretero-Genevrier,* Martí Gich,* Laura Picas, Clément Sanchez, Juan Rodriguez-Carvajal,*
Faraday Discussions, DOI: 10.1039/C4FD00266K
Understanding the crystallization of enantiomorphically pure systems can be relevant to diverse fields such as the study of the origins of life or the purification of racemates. Here, we report on polycrystalline epitaxial thin films of quartz on Si substrates displaying two distinct types of chiral habits that never coexist in the same film. We combine Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) analysis and computer-assisted crystallographic calculations to make a detailed study of these habits of quartz. By estimating the surface energies of the observed crystallites we argue that the films are enantiomorphically pure and we briefly outline a possible mechanism to explain the habit and chiral selection in this system.
In this study, authors demonstrate the formation of oriented piezoelectrically active α-quartz thin films directly on silicon. Films are prepared by dip-coating from alcohol/ water solutions of soluble silicic acid precursors plus surfactant or block copolymer structure-directing agents. Solvent evaporation drives the self-assembly of amorphous silica films composed of ordered arrays of pores. An appropriate thermal treatment results on epitaxial quartz films.
We congratulate the authors and specially our group member Martí Gich. You can read the full article
Soft-Chemistry–Based Routes to Epitaxial α-Quartz Thin Films with Tunable Textures
A. Carretero-Genevrier, M. Gich, L. Picas, J. Gazquez, G. L. Drisko, C. Boissiere, D. Grosso, J. Rodriguez-Carvajal, C. Sanchez
www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 340 17 MAY 2013, 827
You can also read a highlight written by Jeff Brinker in the same issue: Quartz on Silicon. The integration of quartz with silicon may provide a route to fabricate advanced piezoelectric devices. Jeffrey Brinker and Paul G. Clem.
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