Growth of high-quality self-catalyzed core-shell GaAsP nanowires on Si substrates

Abstract

Self-catalyzed GaAsP nanowires (NWs) have a band gap that is capable of covering the working wavelengths from green to infrared. However, the difficulties in controlling P and the complexities of the growth of ternary NWs make it challenging to fabricate them. In this work, self-catalyzed GaAsP NWs were successfully grown on Si substrates by solid-source molecular beam epitaxy and demonstrated almost stacking fault free zinc blend crystal structure, Growth of high-quality shell has been realized on the core NWs. In the shell, a quasi-3-fold composition symmetry has been observed for the first time. Moreover, these growth techniques have been successfully applied for growth on patterned Si substrates after some creative modifications such as high-temperature substrate cleaning and Ga pre-deposition. These results open up new perspectives for integrating III−V nanowire photovoltaics and visible light emitters on the silicon platform using self-catalyzed GaAsP core−shell nanowires.