Doubling the mobility of InAs/InGaAs selective area grown nanowires

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method to double the electron mobility in InAs/InGaAs nanowires grown via selective area growth by optimizing interface quality and lattice mismatch management, achieving some of the highest mobilities reported.

Contribution

It introduces a novel SAG process with atomic hydrogen cleaning and lattice mismatch mitigation, significantly enhancing nanowire electron mobility.

Findings

Achieved electron mobility over 10,000 cm²V⁻¹s⁻¹ in optimized nanowires

Used atomic hydrogen for native oxide removal, improving interface quality

Implemented InGaAs buffer layer to address lattice mismatch

Abstract

Selective area growth (SAG) of nanowires and networks promise a route toward scalable electronics, photonics and quantum devices based on III-V semiconductor materials. The potential of high-mobility SAG nanowires however is not yet fully realized, since interfacial roughness, misfit dislocations at the nanowire/substrate interface and non-uniform composition due to material intermixing all scatter electrons. Here, we explore SAG of highly lattice-mismatched InAs nanowires on insulating GaAs(001) substrates and address these key challenges. Atomically smooth nanowire/substrate interfaces are achieved with the use of atomic hydrogen (a-H) as an alternative to conventional thermal annealing for the native oxide removal. The problem of high lattice mismatch is addressed through an In$_x$Ga$_{1-x}$As buffer layer introduced between the InAs transport channel and the GaAs substrate. The Ga-In material intermixing observed in both the buffer layer and the channel is inhibited via careful tuning of the growth temperature. Performing scanning transmission electron microscopy and x-ray diffraction analysis along with low-temperature transport measurements we show that optimized In-rich buffer layers promote high quality InAs transport channels with the field-effect electron mobility over~10000~cm$^2$V$^{-1}$s$^{-1}$. This is twice as high as for non-optimized samples and among the highest reported for InAs selective area grown nanostructures.