Ytterbium silicide nanostructures prepared by pulsed laser ablation in oven: Structural and electrical characterization

Abstract Ytterbium silicide nanoobjects were synthetized using pulsed laser ablation in an oven at temperatures of 800 and 1000 °C. Ablation of divided target Si/Yb in a flow of Ar resulted in deposits which contained mostly ytterbium silicide nanowires, nanorods and nanoparticles. Single nanoparticles (800 °C) are identical with Yb3Si5 alloy; nanorods possess both a monoclinic phase not corresponding to any known structure in the phase diagram Yb-Si and a face-centered cubic structure close to the pure Yb but with a high Si content. At the temperature of 1000 °C, the studied nanorods and nanowires decorated by nanocrystals are practically amorphous, whereas the structure of those nanocrystals is close to that of the nanorods with the face-centered cubic structure prepared at 800 °C. Nanowire (1000 °C) is a semiconductor with ρ = 132.9 Ω.cm at room temperature, which is comparable to a heavily doped silicon.