Unraveling the strain state of GaN down to single nanowires

GaN nanowires (NWs)grown by molecular beam epitaxy are usually assumed free of strain in spite of different individual luminescence signatures. To ascertain this usual assumption, thec/a of aGaN NW assembly has been characterized using bothX-ray diffraction andRaman spectroscopy, with scaling themeasurement down to the single NW. Free-standing single NWs have been observed free of strain —defined as[c/a−(c/a)o]/(c/a)o—within the experimental accuracy amounting to 1.25 × 10−4. However, in the general case, a significant portion of the NWs is coalesced, generating an average tensile strain that can be partly released by detaching the NWs from their substrates. It is concluded that at the scale of the single NW, the free surface and the residualdoping do not generate a significant strain and only coalescence does.

Source: Journal of Applied Physics - December 8, 2016 Category: Physics Authors: Thomas Auzelle, Xavier Biquard, Edith Bellet-Amalric, Zhihua Fang, Herv é Roussel, Ana Cros and Bruno Daudin Source Type: research