Nickel Foam as a Substrate for III-nitride Nanowire Growth

TL;DR

This paper explores using nickel foam as a flexible substrate for growing dense III-nitride nanowires, enabling improved light emitters with strong luminescence and addressing limitations of traditional thin-film LEDs.

Contribution

It introduces a novel use of nickel foam substrates for III-nitride nanowire growth, demonstrating dense nanowire arrays with strong luminescence for light-emitting applications.

Findings

Dense gallium nitride nanowires grown on nickel foam

Nanowires grow predominantly along the a-plane direction

Strong luminescence observed from GaN and InGaN nanowires

Abstract

This article presents the use of flexible metal foam substrates for the growth of III-nitride nanowire light emitters to tackle the inherent limitations of thin-film light emitting diodes as well as fabrication and application issues of traditional substrates. A dense packing of gallium nitride nanowires were grown on a nickel foam substrate. The nanowires grew predominantly along the a-plane direction, normal to the local surface of the nickel foam. Strong luminescence was observed from undoped GaN and InGaN quantum well light emitting diode nanowires.