In this talk, I will review some recent achievements in modeling of growth and crystal structure of III-V semiconductor nanowires. These nanowires are usually grown by different epitaxy techniques via the vapor-liquid-solid mechanism. In this mechanism, a metal catalyst particle (Au or group III metal) is seated on the top of a nanowire and promotes its vertical growth by different kinetic pathways: directly from vapor or by surface diffusion of adatoms [1-3].

I will first discuss the growth modeling based on the material transport equations and nucleation theory. The latter is used to describe the nucleation-mediated growth at the liquid-solid interface under the droplet. Due to a small size of a catalyst particle, the vapor-liquid-solid nanowire growth usually proceeds in the so-called mononuclear regime, where only one island suceeds in nucleation in one layer and then rapidly spreads laterally to complete the naInowire monolayer slice. This entails major difference with nucleation in large volumes and gives rise to many interesting effects such as self-regulated pulsed supersaturation, temporal anti-correlation of nucleation events  and periodically changing morphology of the growth interface [4-6].

I will then consider theoretical dependences of the nanowire growth rate on the nanowire radius and the growth conditions, and show how these results are used to describe and control the morphology of MBE and MOCVD-grown GaAs, InAs, InP and other III-V nanowires.

The second part of the talk will regard the surprising effect of wurtzite phase formation in the vapor-liquid-solid III-V nanowires of cubic zincblende materials. It will be shown that this effect originates from a lower surface energy of relevant sidewall facets of hexahedral wurtzite nanowires, but also depends on the level of liquid supersaturation in the catalyst droplet during growth. I will discuss the concept of the triple phase line nucleation [7] and show how the supersaturation dependence of the preferred crystal phase can be used to control the structure of catalyzed III-V nanowires [8,9]. In particular, the formation of abrupt zincblende-wurtzite crystal phase heterostructures in III-V nanowires [10] will be demonstrated.

Finally, I will consider the Ga-catalyzed MBE growth of GaAs nanowires on Si substrates and discuss the novel mode of the vapor-liquid-solid nanowire growth where the droplet wets the nanowire sidewalls [11]. This has an inetersting impact on the crystal phase purity and helps to avoid the polytypism on surface energetic grounds.

References

[1] V.G. Dubrovskii, N.V. Sibirev, G.E. Cirlin, I.P. Soshnikov, W.H. Chen, R. Larde, E. Cadel, P. Pareige, T. Xu, B. Grandidier , J.-P. Nys,  D. Stievenard, M. Moewe, L.C. Chuang, and C. Chang-Hasnain, Phys. Rev. B 79, 205316 (2009).

[2] V.G. Dubrovskii, N.V. Sibirev, G.E. Cirlin, A. D. Bouravleuv, Yu.B. Samsonenko, D.L. Dheeraj, H.L. Zhou, C. Sartel,  J.C. Harmand, G. Patriarche, and F. Glas, Phys. Rev. B 80, 205305 (2009).

[3] V.G. Dubrovskii, T. Xu, Y. Lambert, J.-P. Nys, B. Grandidier, D. Stievenard, W. Chen, and P. Pareige, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 105501 (2012).

[4] C.-Y. Wen, J. Tersoff, K. Hillerich, M. C. Reuter, J. H. Park, S. Kodambaka, E.A. Stach, and F.M. Ross, Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 025503 (2011).

[5] F. Glas, J.C. Harmand, and G. Patriarche, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 135501 (2010).

[6] V.G. Dubrovskii, Phys. Rev. B, accepted for publication (2013).

[7] F. Glas, J.C. Harmand, and J. Patriarche, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 146101 (2007).

[8] V.G. Dubrovskii, N.V. Sibirev, J.C. Harmand, and F. Glas, Phys. Rev. B 78, 235301 (2008).

[9]   G.E. Cirlin, V.G. Dubrovskii, Yu.B. Samsonenko, A.D. Bouravleuv, K. Durose, Y.Y. Proskuryakov, B. Mendis, L. Bowen, M. A. Kaliteevski, R.A. Abram, and D. Zeze, Phys. Rev. B 82, 035302 (2010).

[10] K.A. Dick, C. Thelander, L. Samuelson, and P. Caroff, Nano Lett. 10, 3494 (2010).

[11]  V.G. Dubrovskii, G.E. Cirlin, N.V. Sibirev, F. Jabeen,  J.C. Harmand, and P. Werner, Nano Lett. 11, 1247 (2011).        

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