The Growth of Semiconductor and Dielectric Nanowires and Nanowire Arrays and their Plasmonic Applications.

We have investigated the growth of a number of nanowire systems, including Ga2O3, ZnO, InAs, as well as Ga2O3/ZnO hierarchical structures and dielectric core/metal sheath composites. We show that the growth of nanowires can occur by a number of growth mechanisms, even in the same system, and how this process can be tailored for specific applications, including plasmonics. We will show that dielectric/metal composite nanowires can exhibit very strong surface enhanced Raman (SERS) signals, when arranged in a random 3D geometry, which is due to nanowire crossings, and we will show the effects of crossing geometries on the strength of the SERS signal, which is compared with electric field calculations