Understanding homoepitaxial growth of horizontal kinked GaN nanowires

Shaoteng Wu; Xiaoyan Yi; Shuang Tian; Shuo Zhang; Zhiqiang Liu; Liancheng Wang; Junxi Wang; Jinmin Li

doi:10.1088/1361-6528/abcc24

Understanding homoepitaxial growth of horizontal kinked GaN nanowires

Nanotechnology. 2021 Feb 26;32(9):095606. doi: 10.1088/1361-6528/abcc24.

Authors

Shaoteng Wu^{1

2}, Xiaoyan Yi^{1

2}, Shuang Tian³, Shuo Zhang^{1

2}, Zhiqiang Liu^{1

2}, Liancheng Wang⁴, Junxi Wang^{1

2}, Jinmin Li^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Solid-State Lighting, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, People's Republic of China.
² Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing, 100049, People's Republic of China.
³ Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Advanced Metallic Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, People's Republic of China.
⁴ State key Laboratory of High-Performance Complex Manufacturing, College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Central South University, Changsha Hunan, 410083, People's Republic of China.

PMID: 33212433
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6528/abcc24

Abstract

Epitaxial horizontal nanowires (NWs) have attracted much attention due to their easily large-scale integration. From the reported literature, epitaxial growth is usually driven by minimization of strain between NW and substrate, which governs the growth along with specific crystallographic orientation. Here, we report the first homoepitaxial growth of horizontal GaN NWs from a surface-directed vapor-liquid-solid growth method. The NWs grow along with six symmetry-equivalent 〈1-100〉 (m-axis) directions, exhibiting a random 60°/120° kinked configuration. Owing to homoepitaxial growth, strain could be eliminated. From the obtained results, we suggest that the formation the horizontal NWs, and their growth direction /orientation is not directly related to the strain minimization. A general rule based on the epitaxial relationship and potential low-index growth orientation is proposed for understanding the arrangement of epitaxial horizontal NWs. It is deduced that kinking of the horizontal NWs was attributed to unintentional guided growth determined by the roughness of the substrates' surface. This study provides an insight for a better understanding of the evolution of epitaxial horizontal NWs, especially for the growth direction/orientation.