Growth of High Material Quality Group III-Antimonide Semiconductor Nanowires by a Naturally Cooling Process

We report on a simple but powerful approach to grow high material quality InSb and GaSb nanowires in a commonly used tube furnace setup. The approach employs a process of stable heating at a high temperature and then cooling down naturally to room temperature with the nanowire growth occurred effectively during the naturally cooling step. As-grown nanowires are analyzed using a scanning electron microscope and a transmission electron microscope equipped with an energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy setup. It is shown that the grown nanowires are several micrometers in lengths and are zincblende InSb and GaSb crystals. The FET devices are also fabricated with the grown nanowires and investigated. It is shown that the grown nanowires show good, desired electrical properties and should have potential applications in the future nanoelectronics and infrared optoelectronics.