A technique for fabricating InGaAs/GaAs nanotubes of precisely controlled lengths

Abstract

Single-crystal nanotubes of controlled lengths were produced on sidewalls of V-grooves and on a cleaved facet of a heterostructure. This was done using selective molecular-beam-epitaxy growth of a strained InGaAs/GaAs strip and subsequent self-rolling of this strip in a tube. The proposed technique is capable of ensuring good reproducibility for all sizes and exact positioning of nanotubes.

Materials characterization by synchrotron x-ray microprobes and nanoprobes

“…An in-depth characterization of local strain distribution in RUNTs is required to understand the growth process and to optimize the resulting mechanical and electronic properties toward technological applications such as band-gap engineering for optoelectronic devices (Lamberti, 1996a(Lamberti, , 1996b. It was demonstrated, combining micro-Raman Songmuang et al, 2006) and TEM (Prinz et al, 2002;Songmuang et al, 2006), that RUNTs are formed by an alternation of crystalline and noncrystalline layers representing a radial superlattice . Nevertheless, a nondestructive structural characterization of superlattice interfaces, without removal of the RUNTs from the substrate, required the use of XRD (Pietsch, Holý, and Baumbach, 2004).…”

Strain induced semiconductor nanotubes: from formation process to device applications

“…However, the zinc blend four fold symmetry does not appear to be affected by the rolling action [17,23,63]. Stacking faults were found in some nanotubes where the rolling involves a misorientation [40]. TEM has also been done on In x Ga 1−x As/GaAs tubes functionalized with a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) of 1-hexadecanethiol, which created a multiperiod inorganic/organic radial superlattice when rolled up with multiple turns [23].…”

Local Structure of a Rolled-Up Single Crystal: An X-Ray Microdiffraction Study of Individual Semiconductor Nanotubes

“…Insight into the crystalline structure of RUNTs was previously gained by transmission electron microscopy [12,[16][17][18] and micro-Raman spectroscopy [12,16]. TEM revealed that the rolled-up nanotubes can consist of radial superlattices with alternating crystalline and noncrystalline layers [12].…”