Factors Influencing the Interfacial Abruptness in Axial III–V Nanowire Heterostructures

• Published in: Crystal growth & design Vol. 16; no. 4; pp. 2019 - 2023
• Main Authors: Dubrovskii, V. G, Sibirev, N. V
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Chemical Society 06-04-2016
• ISSN: 1528-7483; 1528-7505
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.cgd.5b01613

We present a model that allows for self-consistent description of the interfacial abruptness in axial III–V nanowire heterostructures grown by the vapor–liquid–solid method. Our approach is based on the regular growth concept and avoids using chemical potentials of complex liquid alloys. The model applies equally well to Au-catalyzed or self-catalyzed growth and heterostructures based on either group III or V intermixing. We unravel the major factors influencing the nanowire composition and formulate general recipes for improving the interfacial abruptness. We show that the interfaces become sharper with the growth interrupts at the flux commutation, while the interfacial abruptness of group III based, Au-catalyzed heterostructures should be significantly improved by increasing the group V flux. Quite interestingly, there is a possibility to obtain a nanowire heterostructure by just sharply changing the flux of the other group element.