High Mobility Stemless InSb Nanowires

Abstract

High aspect-ratio InSb nanowires (NWs) of high chemical purity are sought for implementing advanced quantum devices. The growth of InSb NWs is challenging, generally requiring a stem of a foreign material for nucleation. Such a stem tends to limit the length of InSb NWs and its material becomes incorporated in the InSb segment. Here, we report on the growth of chemically pure InSb NWs tens of microns long. Using a selective-area mask in combination with gold as a catalyst allows complete omission of the stem, thus demonstrating that InSb NWs can grow directly from the substrate. The introduction of the selective-area mask gives rise to novel growth kinetics, demonstrating high growth rates and complete suppression of layer deposition on the mask for Sb-rich conditions. The crystal quality and chemical purity of these NWs is reflected in the significant enhancement of low-temperature electron mobility, yielding an average of 4.4 × 104 cm2/(V s), compared to previously studied InSb NWs grown on stems.

Luminescent Colloidal InSb Quantum Dots from In Situ Generated Single-Source Precursor

“… 21 These challenges were nonetheless successfully addressed in the growth of InSb nanowires by metal organic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE), which has recently reached a very mature level, yielding arrays of high-quality, monodisperse, stemless InSb nanowires (diameter: 70–170 nm, length: 2–10 μm). 21 …”

“…, gold-catalyzed vapor–liquid–solid epitaxy, temperatures as high as 495 °C, Sb/In molar ratios ranging from 300 to 7000, and low pressures). 21 As a result, previous work on colloidal InSb QDs has been mostly focused on identifying precursors and conditions capable of yielding size and shape control similar to that currently available for the II–VI and IV–VI QDs.…”

In-plane selective area InSb–Al nanowire quantum networks

“…5 shows that the InSb structures nucleate from a single site and over time, during growth under the same growth conditions, no new nucleation sites appear as all grown segments in a single structure are connected at all times. From these results, we conclude that Sb changes the surface energy on the InP substrate and enhances the surface diffusion of the In precursor material 28 . For the growth of large networks, a high V/III ratio is thus beneficial to have a minimum number of nucleation events.…”

“…From these results, we conclude that Sb changes the surface energy on the InP substrate and enhances the surface diffusion of the In precursor material. [27] For the growth of large networks, a high V/III ratio is thus beneficial to have a minimum number of nucleation events. The largest single crystalline networks we have fabricated with our method have a wire diameter of around 60 nm with lengths of up to 11 µm (see figure S8d).…”

Growth of Self-Catalyzed InAs/InSb Axial Heterostructured Nanowires: Experiment and Theory

“…Unfortunately, however, epitaxial growth of InSb in the form of two-dimensional layers is challenging due to its large lattice mismatch with common semiconductor substrates [3,4]. There have been many efforts to grow InSb in the form of nanowires (NWs) on both on InSb substrates [5] and on lattice-mismatched substrates such as Si and InAs [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], which enables a radical improvement of its crystalline quality and may pave new ways to fabricate InSb-based devices. Despite this progress, it is admittedly challenging to maintain the necessary control over the morphology and dimensions of InSb NWs, and many fundamental aspects of their growth and related properties are not yet fully understood.…”