Compositional Correlation between the Nanoparticle and the Growing Au-Assisted InxGa1- xAs Nanowire

Robin Sjökvist; Daniel Jacobsson; Marcus Tornberg; Reine Wallenberg; Egor D Leshchenko; Jonas Johansson; Kimberly A Dick

doi:10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c02121

Compositional Correlation between the Nanoparticle and the Growing Au-Assisted In_xGa_{1- x}As Nanowire

J Phys Chem Lett. 2021 Aug 12;12(31):7590-7595. doi: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c02121. Epub 2021 Aug 4.

Authors

Robin Sjökvist^{1

2}, Daniel Jacobsson^{1

2

3}, Marcus Tornberg^{1

2}, Reine Wallenberg^{1

2

3}, Egor D Leshchenko^{2

4}, Jonas Johansson^{2

4}, Kimberly A Dick^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Analysis and Synthesis, Lund University, Box 124, 22100 Lund, Sweden.
² NanoLund, Lund University, Box 118, 22100 Lund, Sweden.
³ National Centre for High Resolution Electron Microscopy, Lund University, Box 124, 22100 Lund, Sweden.
⁴ Solid State Physics, Lund University, Box 118, 22100 Lund, Sweden.

Abstract

The nanowire geometry is favorable for the growth of ternary semiconductor materials, because the composition and properties can be tuned freely without substrate lattice matching. To achieve precise control of the composition in ternary semiconductor nanowires, a deeper understanding of the growth is required. One unknown aspect of seeded nanowire growth is how the composition of the catalyst nanoparticle affects the resulting composition of the growing nanowire. We report the first in situ measurements of the nanoparticle and In_xGa_1-xAs nanowire compositional relationship using an environmental transmission electron microscopy setup. The compositions were measured and correlated during growth, via X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy. Contrary to predictions from thermodynamic models, the experimental results do not show a miscibility gap. Therefore, we construct a kinetic model that better predicts the compositional trends by suppressing the miscibility gap. The findings imply that compositional control of In_xGa_1-xAs nanowires is possible across the entire compositional range.