Indium Antimonide Nanowires: Synthesis and Properties

Abstract

This article summarizes some of the critical features of pure indium antimonide nanowires (InSb NWs) growth and their potential applications in the industry. In the first section, historical studies on the growth of InSb NWs have been presented, while in the second part, a comprehensive overview of the various synthesis techniques is demonstrated briefly. The major emphasis of current review is vapor phase deposition of NWs by manifold techniques. In addition, author review various protocols and methodologies employed to generate NWs from diverse material systems via self-organized fabrication procedures comprising chemical vapor deposition, annealing in reactive atmosphere, evaporation of InSb, molecular/ chemical beam epitaxy, solution-based techniques, and top-down fabrication method. The benefits and ill effects of the gold and self-catalyzed materials for the growth of NWs are explained at length. Afterward, in the next part, four thermodynamic characteristics of NW growth criterion concerning the expansion of NWs, growth velocity, Gibbs–Thomson effect, and growth model were expounded and discussed concisely. Recent progress in device fabrications is explained in the third part, in which the electrical and optical properties of InSb NWs were reviewed by considering the effects of conductivity which are diameter dependent and the applications of NWs in the fabrications of field-effect transistors, quantum devices, thermoelectrics, and detectors.

Ambipolar transport in narrow bandgap semiconductor InSb nanowires

“…Thanks to having the top gate in close vicinity of the NW channel and the narrow bandgap of the channel material, the NWFETs can be efficiently tuned from their n-type on-states to their p-type on-states through their offstates and thus exhibit three well-distinguished transport regions in their ambipolar characteristics. The measurements show that the devices exhibit an n-type circumferencenormalized on-state current of ~26 µA/µm, which is among the highest reported for InSb 11 NWFETs, and a p-type on-state current of ~11 µA/µm, which is the highest one ever reported so far for InSb NWFETs. From the temperature dependent measurements of the off-state current of the NWFET with a channel length of 1 µm and a NW diameter of 50 nm, a bandgap of 190-220 meV in the channel material is extracted.…”

Recent advances in Sb-based III–V nanowires

“…Significantly, the selected metal catalyst can also be doped into the NWs body during the NWs growth process, playing an important role on the electronics property. As shown in figure 1(c), with a small ionization energy, the metal will be easy to be doped into the NWs body [78]. Meanwhile, with a positive ionization energy (close to the conduction band), the metals are likely to lose their electrons, acting as a n-type doping source, otherwise, the metals are the p-type doping sources.…”

Recent advances in low‐dimensional semiconductor nanomaterials and their applications in high‐performance photodetectors

“…III‐V NWs, including III‐telluride (InSb and GaSb), III‐arsenide (InAs and GaAs), and III‐phosphide (InP), have a wide range of applications in light sensors, PDs, and other fields. In particular, III‐Sb NWs have a narrow bandgap and very high carrier mobility, which makes them useful for IR detection …”

“…In particular, III-Sb NWs have a narrow bandgap and very high carrier mobility, which makes them useful for IR detection. 94 In addition to these binary compounds NWs, ternary alloys 64,67,95,96 and even quaternary alloys NWs 97,98 have received much attention. Similar to the formation of a 2D alloy, its properties can be controlled by controlling growth conditions and raw materials.…”