Silver as Seed-Particle Material for GaAs Nanowires?Dictating Crystal Phase and Growth Direction by Substrate Orientation

Here we investigate the feasibility of silver as seed-particle material to synthesize GaAs nanowires and show that both crystal phase and growth direction can be controlled by choice of substrate orientation. A (111)B substrate orientation can be used to form vertically aligned wurtzite GaAs nanowires and a (100) substrate orientation to form vertically aligned zinc blende GaAs nanowires. A 45-50% yield of vertical nanowire growth is achieved on the (100) substrate orientation without employing any type of surface modification or nucleation strategy to promote a vertical growth direction. In addition, photoluminescence measurements reveal that the photon emission from the silver seeded wurtzite GaAs nanowires is characterized by a single and narrow emission peak at 1.52 eV.