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Axiotaxy driven growth of belt-shaped InAs nanowires in molecular beam epitaxy

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Abstract

In this study, we demonstrate the axiotaxy driven growth of belt-shaped InAs nanowires using Au catalysts by molecular beam epitaxy. It is found that, the zinc-blende structured InAs nanowires, with the features of [\(\bar{1}\bar{1}\bar{3}\)] growth direction and extensive {\(1\bar{1}0\)} side-surfaces, are induced by catalysts in Au-In α phase through the axiotaxy growth, in which the lattice mismatch between the projections of atomic planes onto nanowire/catalyst interfaces is minimized by forming extraordinary tilted interfaces. Our atomic-resolution in situ TEM heating experiments show that the catalysts remained in the solid state of Au-In α phase during the axiotaxy growth, by which the vapor—solid—solid growth mechanism can be confirmed. Through manipulating the growth direction, this unusual growth mechanism can provide a practical pathway to control the morphology of the low-dimensional nanomaterials, from conventional nanowires to belt-shaped nanowires utilizing a significant lateral growth, simply using nanoparticles as catalyst.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council, the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2016YFB0402401), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 11634009, 11774016, and 61974138), the Natural Science Basic Research Program of Shaanxi Province (No. 2020JQ-222) and the Key Programs of Frontier Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. QYZDJ-SSW-JSC007). Dong Pan acknowledges the support from the Youth Innovation Promotion Association, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant 2017156). The authors acknowledge the Microscopy Australia for providing characterization facilities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Engineering, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, 4072, Australia

    Qiang Sun & Jin Zou

  2. Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, 4072, Australia

    Jin Zou

  3. State Key Laboratory of Superlattices and Microstructures, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100083, China

    Dong Pan & Jianhua Zhao

  4. School of Physical Science and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710129, China

    Xutao Zhang

  5. State Key Laboratory for Infrared Physics, Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 200083, China

    Xutao Zhang, Pingping Chen & Wei Lu

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  1. Qiang Sun
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  2. Dong Pan
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  3. Xutao Zhang
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  4. Jianhua Zhao
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  7. Jin Zou
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Correspondence to Jin Zou.

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Sun, Q., Pan, D., Zhang, X. et al. Axiotaxy driven growth of belt-shaped InAs nanowires in molecular beam epitaxy. Nano Res. 14, 2330–2336 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-3231-9

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