Hadas Shtrikman
The Henry and Gertrude F. Rothschild Senior Research Fellow Chair
Growth and Study of strained InAs/GaAs core shell nanowires
Growth and study of strained InAs/GaAs core shell NWs based on embedding high quality InAs NWs were conducted in the previous year in a thin GaAs layer. InAs NWs have gained particular interest partially due to the relative simplicity of fabrication of reliable Ohmic contacts but mainly due to large expected electron mobility and strong bulk spin-orbit coupling. Surface oxides and adhered impurities are a substantial obstacle in pursuing the conductance through InAs NWs. Therefore we chose to embed them in a GaAs layer in spite of the 7% mismatch between the two materials. The excess strain is found to relax forming a matrix of edge dislocations (extra crystal planes which compensate for the difference in lattice constant) around the nanowire and along it. The distance between the additional planes relates well to the mismatch.