High‐Responsivity Photodetection by a Self‐Catalyzed Phase‐Pure p‐GaAs Nanowire

Defects are detrimental for optoelectronics devices, such as stacking faults can form carrier‐transportation barriers, and foreign impurities (Au) with deep‐energy levels can form carrier traps and nonradiative recombination centers. Here, self‐catalyzed p‐type GaAs nanowires (NWs) with a pure zinc blende (ZB) structure are first developed, and then a photodetector made from these NWs is fabricated. Due to the absence of stacking faults and suppression of large amount of defects with deep energy levels, the photodetector exhibits room‐temperature high photoresponsivity of 1.45 × 10 5 A W −1 and excellent specific detectivity ( D *) up to 1.48 × 10 14 Jones for a low‐intensity light signal of wavelength 632.8 nm, which outperforms previously reported NW‐based photodetectors. These results demonstrate these self‐catalyzed pure‐ZB GaAs NWs to be promising candidates for optoelectronics applications.