US Patent 7569470 - Fabrication of nanowire arrays on vicinal surface

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7569470.html

This patent teaches a new method to manufacture nanowires based on deviations of the crystallographic orientation of a substrate on which the nanowires are grown. Claim 1 reads:

1. A method of preparing an array of conducting or semi-conducting nanowires comprising:

forming a vicinal surface of stepped atomic terraces on a substrate; and

depositing a fractional layer of dopant material to form nanostripes having a width less than the width of the atomic terraces;

wherein diffusion of the atoms of the dopant nanostripes into the substrate forms the nanowires.