AVS 52nd International Symposium
    Electronic Materials and Processing Monday Sessions
       Session EM+NS-MoM

Paper EM+NS-MoM8
Synthesis of Aligned Arrays of III-Nitride Nanowires and Heterostructure Nanowires via MOCVD

Monday, October 31, 2005, 10:40 am, Room 310

Session: Novel Approaches in Wide Bandgap Semiconductors
Presenter: G.T. Wang, Sandia National Laboratories
Authors: G.T. Wang, Sandia National Laboratories
J.R. Creighton, Sandia National Laboratories
P.P. Provencio, Sandia National Laboratories
D. Werder, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Correspondent: Click to Email
Nanowires based on the direct bandgap semiconductor Group III nitride (AlGaInN) materials system are attractive due to their potential in novel optoelectronic applications, including LEDs, lasers, high power transistors, and sensors. We have employed a MOCVD process to synthesize highly aligned arrays of single-crystalline GaN nanowires in a standard cold-wall rotating disk reactor on 2-inch diameter sapphire wafer substrates without patterning or the use of a template. Building on this process, we have also been able to synthesize novel core-shell heterostructure nanowires consisting of a GaN cores and various III-nitride shell materials, including AlN, InN, and AlGaN, and InGaN. In this presentation, several challenges and issues regarding control of the growth process will be discussed, including selectivity of VLS growth versus film nucleation, control of nanowire alignment and density, as well as the ability to control shell-layer uniformity in heterostructure nanowires will be discussed. Data on the optoelectronic and electrical properties of the nanowires and heterostructure nanowires will also be presented. The growth processes and reactor environment employed in this study are typical of those used to synthesize device-quality III-nitride films and should be scalable to larger commercial reactors and substrates. Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.