Method for Suppression of Stacking Faults in Wurtzite III-V Nanowires

The growth of wurtzite GaAs and InAs nanowires with diameters of a few tens of nanometers with negligible intermixing of zinc blende stacking is reported. The suppression of the number of stacking faults was obtained by a procedure within the vapor-liquid-solid growth, which exploits the theoretical result that nanowires of small diameter (similar to 10 nm) adopt purely wurtzite structure and are observed to thicken (via lateral growth) once the axial growth exceeds a certain length.