Simultaneous Selective Area Growth of Wurtzite and Zincblende Self-Catalyzed GaAs Nanowires on Silicon

Selective area epitaxy constitutes a mainstream method to obtain reproducible nanomaterials. As a counterpart, self-assembly allows their growth without costly substrate preparation, with the drawback of uncontrolled positioning. We propose a mixed approach in which self-assembly is limited to reduced regions on a patterned silicon substrate. While nanowires grow with a wide distribution of diameters, we note a mostly binary occurrence of crystal phases. Self-catalyzed GaAs nanowires form in either a wurtzite or zincblende phase in the same growth run. Quite surprisingly, thicker nanowires are wurtzite and thinner nanowires are zincblende, while the common view predicts the reverse trend. We relate this phenomenon to the influx of Ga adatoms by surface diffusion, which results in different contact angles of Ga droplets. We demonstrate the wurtzite phase of thick GaAs NWs up to 200 nm in diameter in the Au-free approach, which has not been achieved so far to our knowledge.

Automated summary

The study proposed a mixed approach to restrict self-assembly growth of nanomaterials in limited areas, revealing a wide distribution of nanowire diameters but mostly binary crystal phases. Additionally, it was found that thicker GaAs nanowires are zincblende phase while thinner ones are wurtzite phase, contrary to common beliefs.