Interesting phenomena of GaAs nanowire growth have been observed. The nanowires were grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) on GaAs (1 1 1)B substrates with an Au catalyst at 464 • C. The growth rates of all nanowires were almost the same for a fixed density of Au nanodrops. TEM analysis demonstrates a stacking-fault-free zincblende structure of the nanowires even when their radius is reduced to as small as 12 nm. A theoretical model is developed that is capable of describing the critical radius of zincblende to wurtzite phase transition as a function of vapor supersaturation and material constants. The model shows that the surprising prevalence of the zincblende structure should originate from very high supersaturations during MOCVD.