Corrugated surfaces formed on GaAs(331)A substrates: the template for laterally ordered InGaAs nanowires

Morphology evolution of high-index GaAs(331)A surfaces during molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth has been investigated in order to achieve regularly distributed step-array templates and fabricate spatially ordered low-dimensional nano-structures. Atomic force microscope (AFM) measurements have shown that the step height and terrace width of GaAs layers increase monotonically with increasing substrate temperature. By using the step arrays formed on GaAs(331)A surfaces as the templates, we have fabricated highly ordered InGaAs nanowires. The improved homogeneity and the increased density of the InGaAs nanowires are attributed to the modulated strain field caused by vertical multi-stacking, as well as the effect of corrugated surface of the template. Photoluminescence (PL) tests confirmed remarkable polarization anisotropy.