III-V semiconductor nanowires have shown great potential in various quantum transport experiments. However, realizing a scalable high-quality nanowire-based platform that could lead to quantum information applications has been challenging. Here, we study the potential of selective area growth by molecular beam epitaxy of InAs nanowire networks grown on GaAs-based buffer layers. The buffered geometry allows for substantial elastic strain relaxation and a strong enhancement of field effect mobility. We show that the networks possess strong spin-orbit interaction and long phase coherence lengths with a temperature dependence indicating ballistic transport. With these findings, and the compatibility of the growth method with hybrid epitaxy, we conclude that the material platform fulfills the requirements for a wide range of quantum experiments and applications.Material science plays a key role in quantum computing research. Long quantum state lifetimes -the fundamental prerequisite for realizing quantum computers -rely on the ability to produce materials with high purity and structural quality. Together with the requirements of scalability and reproducibility, these properties are what mainly defines the challenges of material science in quantum computing today. Proposals for topological quantum computing, 1-3 which are based on hybrid semiconductor-superconductor nanowire (NW) networks, are being pursued by numerous research groups and have ignited intense research efforts on hybrid epitaxy. 4-8 NW scalability is tightly related to the semiconductor growth approach. Top-down lithography has been used to define NWs in two-dimensional layers 5,9 and a variety of methods have been pursued for alignment and positioning of bottom-up vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) grown NWs, such as dielectrophoresis techniques, 10 nanoscale combing 11 and magnetic aligning of NWs. 12 Despite of these developments, large-scale synthesis of bottom-up grown high-mobility NW networks that are compatible with epitaxial interwire connections and semiconductor/superconductor epitaxy has still not been realized. To realize the epitaxial connections, a lot of effort has been put into the growth of branched NWs via the VLS method. 8,13-15 A scalable approach has been developed in Ref. [16,17] using template assisted growth of inplane NW networks. 18 Nonetheless, this approach is not yet compatible with superconductor epitaxy. An alternative scalable approach is to use lithographically defined openings in a mask on a crystalline substrate. This method is referred to as selective area growth (SAG) and until recently has mainly been used in conjunction with metal organic chemical vapour deposition 19,20 , metal organic vapour phase epitaxy 21,22 , chemical beam epitaxy and metal organic molecular beam epitaxy (chemical beam epitaxy). [23][24][25][26] In contrast to molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), the dissociation kinetics of the chemical precursors in these methods enhance the growth selectivity on masked substrates by expanding the growth parameter window, ...
Selective-area growth is a promising technique for enabling of the fabrication of the scalable III–V nanowire networks required to test proposals for Majorana-based quantum computing devices. However, the contours of the growth parameter window resulting in selective growth remain undefined. Herein, we present a set of experimental techniques that unambiguously establish the parameter space window resulting in selective III–V nanowire networks growth by molecular beam epitaxy. Selectivity maps are constructed for both GaAs and InAs compounds based on in situ characterization of growth kinetics on GaAs(001) substrates, where the difference in group III adatom desorption rates between the III–V surface and the amorphous mask area is identified as the primary mechanism governing selectivity. The broad applicability of this method is demonstrated by the successful realization of high-quality InAs and GaAs nanowire networks on GaAs, InP, and InAs substrates of both (001) and (111)B orientations as well as homoepitaxial InSb nanowire networks. Finally, phase coherence in Aharonov–Bohm ring experiments validates the potential of these crystals for nanoelectronics and quantum transport applications. This work should enable faster and better nanoscale crystal engineering over a range of compound semiconductors for improved device performance.
Selective area growth is a promising technique to realize semiconductorsuperconductor hybrid nanowire networks potentially hosting topologically protected Majorana-based qubits. In some cases, however, such as molecular beam epitaxy of InSb on InP or GaAs substrates, nucleation and selective growth conditions do not necessarily overlap. To overcome this challenge we propose Metal-Sown Selective Area Growth (MS SAG) technique which allows decoupling selective deposition and nucleation growth conditions by temporarily isolating these stages. It consists of three steps: (i) selective deposition of In droplets only inside the mask openings at relatively high temperatures favoring selectivity, (ii) nucleation of InSb under Sb flux from In droplets which act as a reservoir of group III adatoms, done at relatively low temperatures favoring nucleation of InSb, (iii) homoepitaxy of InSb on top of formed nucleation Page 3 of 43 ACS Paragon Plus Environment Nano Letters layer under simultaneous supply of In and Sb fluxes at conditions favoring selectivity and high crystal quality. We demonstrate that complex InSb nanowire networks of high crystal and electrical quality can be achieved this way. We extract mobility values of 10,000-25,000 cm V-1 s-1 consistently from field-effect and Hall mobility measurements across single nanowire segments as well as wires with junctions. Moreover, we demonstrate ballistic transport in a 440 nm long channel in a single nanowire under magnetic field below 1 T. We also extract a phase-coherent length of ~8 µm at 50 mK in mesoscopic rings. Semiconductor-superconductor hybrid nanowire (NW) networks are promising candidates for hosting topologically protected Majorana-based qubits, which have a potential to revolutionize the emerging field of quantum computing. 1 The III-V semiconductor InSb is of particular interest in this regard owing to its large g-factor, which enables a relatively small magnetic field to drive a hybrid semiconductor-superconductor NW into the topological regime. Moreover the small effective mass favorably leads to a large subband spacing. 2 So far, mostly single 3 or small-scale networks 4 of InSb NWs were used in Majorana-related transport experiments. To support further progress in the field,
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