US Patent 7666708 - Uniform nanowire growth

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7666708.html

This patent from the Lieber Research Group of Harvard has relatively early priority (~2000) and includes some basic claims to the fabrication and structure of doped nanowire semiconductors. Claim 1 reads:

1. A method, comprising:

growing a population of semiconductor nanowires, each having at least one portion having a smallest width less than 500 nanometers, catalytically from catalyst particles having a variation in diameter of less than about 20% and being selected such that the population of semiconductor nanowires produced according to the method has a variation in diameter of less than 20%.