Controllable Growth and Electrical Properties of Homogeneous Ternary In <sub> <i>x</i> </sub> Ga <sub> 1– <i>x</i> </sub> As Nanowires
Ternary In<sub><i>x</i></sub>Ga<sub>1-<i>x</i></sub>As nanowires, with their continuously tunable bandgaps spanning the near- to mid-infrared range, have emerged as ideal candidate materials for developing novel optoelectronic devices. However, achieving controlled growth of high-quality ternary In<sub><i>x</i></sub>Ga<sub>1-<i>x</i></sub>As nanowires with widely tunable compositions remains a key challenge in this field. Particularly for ternary In<sub><i>x</i></sub>Ga<sub>1-<i>x</i></sub>As nanowires grown via the self-catalytic method, common issues include low indium incorporation efficiency, severe compositional segregation, and the spontaneous formation of core-shell structures. In this work, we demonstrate the controlled growth of ternary In<sub><i>x</i></sub>Ga<sub>1-<i>x</i></sub>As nanowires with widely tunable and uniform composition on Si (111) substrates by molecular-beam epitaxy. It was found that simply increasing the indium flux cannot effectively raise the indium content (<i>x</i> < 0.05), while lowering the growth temperature, although it increases indium incorporation, induces severe axial and radial compositional inhomogeneity, leading to the formation of multilayered In<sub><i>x</i></sub>Ga<sub>1-<i>x</i></sub>As core-shell structures with varying indium contents. By synergistically regulating the growth temperature and the V/III flux ratio, we successfully suppressed indium segregation and obtained ternary In<sub><i>x</i></sub>Ga<sub>1-<i>x</i></sub>As nanowires with uniform composition and homogeneous distribution. The indium composition <i>x</i> in the nanowires could be tuned up to 0.85. Microstructural characterization and energy-dispersive spectroscopy confirmed the absence of spontaneous core-shell structures. Electrical measurements revealed an electron mobility at low temperatures around 4600 cm<sup>2</sup>/V·s. This study provides a material foundation for the development of high-performance ternary In<sub><i>x</i></sub>Ga<sub>1-<i>x</i></sub>As nanowire-based optoelectronic devices.
Authors
- J. Wang
- Qing Zhong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8514-9581)
- Donghai Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1862-8333)
- Junze Zhang
- Yukun Yin
- Wenlong Yang
- Rong Wu
- Yi Luo
- H. Q. Xu
- Dong Pan
- Haiyan Shi
- Xiyu Hou
- Jianhua Zhao
Institutions
- Zhejiang International Studies University (CN)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Peking University (CN)
- Laboratoire de physique des Solides (FR)
- Quantum Devices (United States) (US)
- FZU ‒ Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (CZ)
- Institute of Semiconductors (CN)
- Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences (CN)
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Beihang University (CN)
- Xinjiang University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters
- Published
- 2026-01-14
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.5c03756
- Primary Topic
- Nanowire Synthesis and Applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00