- Polarization-induced diodes in graded nanowires
- Three-dimensional nanowire heterostructures
- Thermal spintronics: spin-Seebeck effect in GaMnAs
- Molecular Beam Epitaxy growth of III-Nitride heterostructures
- Shortwavelength intersubband transitions in GaN/AlN superlattices
- Spectroscopy of inter- and intraband optical transitions in wide band gap quantum structures
Three-dimensional nanowire heterostructures
III-nitride nanowires grown by plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy are attractive for many reasons. They grow on a variety of substrates, including Si. Strain accommodation in the nanowires allows for the use of materials with large lattice mismatch in a single heterostructure. The geometry of nanowires allows for both vertical and coaxial heterostructures, while planar samples only allow for vertical heterostructures. This last point is especially important since in III-nitrides growth direction largely determines the magnitude of internal electric fields due to polarization.
Our work uses the growth conditions of GaN nanowires to control how the nanowires nucleate and grow. To do this, we first establish a growth phase diagram relating nanowire characteristics to growth conditions (i.e. substrate temperature and III/V ratio). We can control density over arbitrarily long times. Notice in Fig. 1 that while density is controlled, by changing growth kinetics we are able to tune whether nanowires grow vertically or coaxially. This control allows formation of complex 3D nanowire heterostructures. We have grown both vertical and coaxial AlN/GaN (~2nm /~2nm) nanowire superlattices (Fig. 2). The latter of these represents a coaxial III-nitride nanowire heterostructure with multiple layers (a multiple quantum well) grown by molecular beam epitaxy.
For more information about this work, please see:
S. D. Carnevale, J. Yang, P. J. Phillips, M. J. Mills, and R. C. Myers. Nano Lett. 11, 866-871 (2011) .