Widely tunable alloy composition and crystal structure in catalyst-free InGaAs nanowire arrays grown by selective area molecular beam epitaxy

Treu, J.; Speckbacher, M.; Saller, K.; Morkötter, S.; Döblinger, M.; Xu, X.; Riedl, H.; Abstreiter, G.; Finley, J. J. and Koblmüller, G. (2016): Widely tunable alloy composition and crystal structure in catalyst-free InGaAs nanowire arrays grown by selective area molecular beam epitaxy. In: Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 108, No. 5, 53110

Abstract

We delineate the optimized growth parameter space for high-uniformity catalyst-free InGaAs nano-wire (NW) arrays on Si over nearly the entire alloy compositional range using selective area molecular beam epitaxy. Under the required high group-V fluxes and V/III ratios, the respective growth windows shift to higher growth temperatures as the Ga-content x(Ga) is tuned from In-rich to Garich InGaAs NWs. Using correlated x-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, and micro-photoluminescence spectroscopy, we identify structural defects to govern luminescence line-widths in In-rich (x(Ga) < 0.4) and Ga-rich (x(Ga) > 0.6) NWs, whereas limitations at intermediate Ga-content (0.4 < x(Ga) < 0.6) are mainly due to compositional inhomogeneities. Most remarkably, the catalyst-free InGaAs NWs exhibit a characteristic transition in crystal structure from wurtzite to zincblende (ZB) dominated phase near x(Ga) similar to 0.4 that is further reflected in a cross-over from blue-shifted to red-shifted photoluminescence emission relative to the band edge emission of the bulk ZB InGaAs phase. (C) 2016 AIP Publishing LLC.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Chemistry and Pharmacy > Department of Chemistry
• Subjects: 500 Science > 540 Chemistry
• ISSN: 0003-6951
• Language: English