Growth of Y-shaped nanorods through physical vapor deposition

This work presents a proposed mechanism for fabricating Y-shaped nanorods, demonstrates the feasibility of the proposal through classical molecular dynamics simulations, and validates the simulations through magnetron sputter deposition experiments. The proposed mechanism relies primarily on the formation of stacking faults during deposition and to a lesser degree on diffusion kinetics and geometrical shadowing. Applications of the proposed mechanism may enable the design of nanorod arrays with controlled branching.