Sb-induced phase control of InAsSb nanowires grown by molecular beam epitaxy

Q D Zhuang; Ezekiel A Anyebe; R Chen; H Liu; Ana M Sanchez; Mohana K Rajpalke; Tim D Veal; Z M Wang; Y Z Huang; H D Sun

doi:10.1021/nl5040946

Sb-induced phase control of InAsSb nanowires grown by molecular beam epitaxy

Nano Lett. 2015 Feb 11;15(2):1109-16. doi: 10.1021/nl5040946. Epub 2015 Jan 7.

Authors

Q D Zhuang¹, Ezekiel A Anyebe, R Chen, H Liu, Ana M Sanchez, Mohana K Rajpalke, Tim D Veal, Z M Wang, Y Z Huang, H D Sun

Affiliation

¹ Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China , Chengdu 610054, People's Republic of China.

PMID: 25559370
DOI: 10.1021/nl5040946

Abstract

For the first time, we report a complete control of crystal structure in InAs(1-x)Sb(x) NWs by tuning the antimony (Sb) composition. This claim is substantiated by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy combined with photoluminescence spectroscopy. The pure InAs nanowires generally show a mixture of wurtzite (WZ) and zinc-blende (ZB) phases, where addition of a small amount of Sb (∼2-4%) led to quasi-pure WZ InAsSb NWs, while further increase of Sb (∼10%) resulted in quasi-pure ZB InAsSb NWs. This phase transition is further evidenced by photoluminescence (PL) studies, where a dominant emission associated with the coexistence of WZ and ZB phases is present in the pure InAs NWs but absent in the PL spectrum of InAs0.96Sb0.04 NWs that instead shows a band-to-band emission. We also demonstrate that the Sb addition significantly reduces the stacking fault density in the NWs. This study provides new insights on the role of Sb addition for effective control of nanowire crystal structure.

Keywords: InAsSb; SEM; TEM; molecular beam epitaxy; nanowires; phase; photoluminescence.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't