Epitactically Interpenetrated High Quality ZnO Nanostructured Junctions on Microchips Grown by the Vapor—Liquid—Solid Method

The usability of nanostructures in electrical devices such as gas sensors critically depends on the ability to form high quality contacts and junctions, at least in a two terminal setup. For the fabrication of various nanostructures, vapor−liquid−solid (VLS) growth is meanwhile a widely spread and very efficient technique for many semiconductors. However, as already demonstrated in the literature, forming contacts with the VLS grown structures to utilize them in a device is typically tedious. Either the substrate material has to be the same, such as the VLS material, or a laborious procedure has to be used to connect one side with the other. As a strikingly simple alternative approach, we report that the ability of VLS grown nanostructures to interpenetrate each other in a homoepitactical manner can be used to form a connecting bridge between two gold contact lines on a microchip. Other methods of direct growth are already established, but they lead only to a touching of the nanowires and not to interpene...