Ensembles of indium phosphide nanowires: physical properties and functional devices integrated on non-single crystal platforms

摘要

A new route to grow an ensemble of indium phosphide single-crystal semiconductor nanowires is described. Unlike conventional epitaxial growth of single-crystal semiconductor films, the proposed route for growing semiconductor nanowires does not require a single-crystal semiconductor substrate. In the proposed route, instead of using single-crystal semiconductor substrates that are characterized by their long-range atomic ordering, a template layer that possesses short-range atomic ordering prepared on a non-single-crystal substrate is employed. On the template layer, epitaxial information associated with its short-range atomic ordering is available within an area that is comparable to that of a nanowire root. Thus the template layer locally provides epitaxial information required for the growth of semiconductor nanowires. In the particular demonstration described in this paper, hydrogenated silicon was used as a template layer for epitaxial growth of indium phosphide nanowires. The indium phosphide nanowires grownrnon the hydrogenerated silicon template layer were found to be single crystal and optically active. Simple photoconduc-tors and pin-diodes were fabricated and tested with the view towards various optoelectronic device applications where group III-V compound semiconductors are functionally integrated onto non-single-crystal platforms.