Advanced multi-component nanostructures designed by dynamic shadowing growth

Dynamic shadowing growth is a simple and powerful nanofabrication technique that combines oblique angle deposition with substrate manipulation in a thin film deposition system, which mainly utilizes self-shadowing effect to form well-aligned nanorod arrays. Many unique nanostructures have been fabricated or designed by properly programming the substrate motions, deposition sources, deposition rates, and shadowing effects in multi-step shadowing growth processes. The formed nanostructures have found many promising applications such as chemical and biological sensors, energy storages, nanomotors, etc., due to their unique characteristics of well-controlled morphologies, structures, and compositions. This review is focused on the design and fabrication of both compositionally and morphologically complex nanostructure arrays by multilayer and co-deposition shadowing growth techniques, and the emphasis will be put on the design and fabrication of multi-component nanostructures with different morphologies.