| Semiconductor nanowires (NW) represent an ideal system for investigating low dimensional physics and are expected to play an important role as both interconnects and functional device elements in nanoscale electronic and optoelectronic devices. This thesis presents a series of key advances towards integrated nano-systems from the bottom-up approach using semiconductor NW building blocks.; We first introduce a general approach to controlled synthesis of a broad range of semiconductor NWs via a metal cluster-catalyzed vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) growth mechanism. The diameter, length, and chemical composition of the NWs are controlled by the metal catalyst diameter, the growth time and vapor phase semiconductor reactants, respectively. Electrical transport studies demonstrate that these NWs can be doped to form n- or p-type material with carrier mobilities comparable to or larger than their bulk counterparts. Photoluminescence studies show that individual NWs exhibit good optical qualities and strong polarized emission. The excellent optic and electronic properties suggests that NWs are excellent candidates for building nanoscale electronics, photonics, and integrated optoelectronics.; Subsequently, we demonstrate the development of hierarchical assembly methods used to organize NW building blocks into functional devices and complex architectures. In particular, electric fields and microfluidic flows have both been explored for the assembly of NWs with controlled spatial location and directionality.; Next, we discuss a variety of conceptually new nanoscale electronic and photonic devices, and device integrations enabled by high quality NWs and flexible assembly methods.; A wide range of nanoscale electronic devices have been demonstrated using NW building blocks, and several new nano-device concepts have been proposed and realized, including crossed-NW p-n diodes, crossed-NW field effect transistors (cNW-FETs) and molecule-gated NW-FETs. These devices can be constructed in a controlled and reproducible manner, which further enables a catalog of integrated structures, including logic gates, computational circuits, and memory device arrays.; Lastly, we describe various NW integrated optoelectronic devices. Specifically, multicolor LED arrays, and smart pixels have been flexibly assembled from different NW materials. A pathway for the integration of bottom-up assembly of nanowire photonics with planar silicon technology is demonstrated. Single nanowire injection lasers and photodetectors have been achieved. The potential application of nanoscale light sources provided by NW photonic devices to chemical and biological analyses is explored. |
