Transients in the formation of nanowire heterostructures

We present results on the effect of seed particle reconfiguration on the growth of short InAs and InP nanowire segments. The reconfiguration originates in two different steady state alloy compositions of the Au/In seed particle during growth of InAs and InP. From compositional analysis of the seed particle, the In content in the seed particle is determined to be 34 and 44% during InAs and InP growth, respectively. When switching between growing InAs and InP, transient effects dominate during the time period of seed particle reconfiguration. We developed a model that quantitatively explains the effect and with the added understanding we are now able to grow short period (<10 nm) nanowire superlattices.