Boron-assisted growth of silica nanowire arrays and silica microflowers for bendable capacitor application

Aligned silica nanowire arrays and silica microflowers were fabricated using boron as the catalyst and under the flow N2 gas. The obtained product had no catalyst contamination. And silica nanowires had long lengths of a few hundreds. The growth of nanowire arrays and microflowers was explained using mechanism. Parallel-plate capacitors using silica nanowire mat as the dielectric were fabricated. The silica nanowire capacitor shows a specific capacitance of 0.24 n F/cm~2 at the frequency of 100 Hz. The capacitor is not monotone changing with the frequency. The measurement of mechanical properties shows that the tunneling current increases along with an increase in bending angle of the capacitor.