Growth of uniform, thin InAs nanowires with a perfect wurtzite structure for conductance measurements

Thin InAs NWs were grown on (111)B InAs by the gold-assisted VLS in a high purity, solid source MBE system. An extremely thin (≈ 0.1 nm) gold layer was evaporated in situ.
The wafer was then heated in the growth chamber under As4 overpressure to form gold droplets. NWs growth was carried out at 400 °C for an hour using In and As4 at a V/III ratio of ≈ 100, producing pure wurtzite structure. The thin InAs NWs are 5-6 μm long and 20−30 nm in diameters, with a significantly small diameter distribution (± 0.5 nm) along the NW. The small amount of gold minimizes the diameter of the droplets formed, resulting in a high uniformity. For such diameters, and the relatively slow growth rate applied, the NWs are basically stacking faults free, as observed by high resolution TEM images.