Si Incorporation in InP Nanowires Grown by Au-Assisted Molecular Beam Epitaxy

We report on the growth, structural characterization, and conductivity studies of Si-doped InP nanowires grown by Au-assisted molecular beam epitaxy. It is shown that Si doping reduces the mean diffusion length of adatoms on the lateral nanowire surface and consequently reduces the nanowire growth rate and promotes lateral growth. A resistivity as low as 5.1 +/- 0.3 x 10(-5) Omega . cm is measured for highly doped nanowires. Two dopant incorporation mechanisms are discussed: incorporation via catalyst particle and direct incorporation on the nanowire sidewalls. The first mechanism is shown to be less efficient than the second one, resulting in inhomogeneous radial dopant distribution. Copyright (C) 2009 Lorenzo Rigutti et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.