Method of fabricating vertically aligned group III-V nanowires
| DWPI Title: Fabrication method for vertically aligned Group III-nitride nanowires involves selectively wet etching sidewalls of c-axis oriented wires to remove antisoptric etch damage and provide array of vertically aligned Group III-nitride nanowires |
| Abstract: A top-down method of fabricating vertically aligned Group III-V micro- and nanowires uses a two-step etch process that adds a selective anisotropic wet etch after an initial plasma etch to remove the dry etch damage while enabling micro/nanowires with straight and smooth faceted sidewalls and controllable diameters independent of pitch. The method enables the fabrication of nanowire lasers, LEDs, and solar cells. |
| Use: Fabrication method of vertically aligned Group III-nitride nanowires. |
| Advantage: Provides a strain-relaxed, bottom-up nanowire growth which enables high crystalline quality with significantly reduced threading dislocation densities. Reduces the piezoelectric polarization fields and relative lack of dislocations, which improves the internal quantum efficiency of the nanowire LEDs compared to the planar LED, and thus, allowing higher indium-gallium-nitride growth temperatures at a given indium composition compared to c-plane, which should result in better indium-gallium-nitride material quality by avoiding defect formation that can occur at lower growth temperatures. |
| Novelty: The fabrication method involves providing a c-plane Group III-nitride substrate (12) or layer on a growth substrate, and coating the top surface of the c-plane Group III-nitride substrate or layer with an etch mask. The c-plane Group III-nitride substrate or layer is then anisotropically etched through the etch mask to provide an array of c-axis oriented nanowires. The sidewalls of the c-axis oriented nanowires is then selectively wet etched to remove anisotropic etch damage and provide an array of vertically aligned Group III-nitride nanowires (10). |
| Filed: 1/17/2013 |
| Application Number: US13743433A |
| Tech ID: SD 11787.1 |
| This invention was made with Government support under Contract No. DE-NA0003525 awarded by the United States Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration. The Government has certain rights in the invention. |
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