A new route to grow single-crystal group III-V compound semiconductor nanostructures on non-single-crystal substrates

A new route to grow single-crystal semiconductor nanostructures is reviewed. Unlike conventional epitaxial growth of single-crystal semiconductor films, the proposed route for growing semiconductor nanostructures does not require a single-crystal semiconductor substrate. In the proposed route, instead of using single-crystal semiconductor substrates that are characterized by their long-range atomic order, a non-single-crystal template layer that possesses short-range atomic order prepared on a non-single-crystal substrate is employed, providing epitaxial information required for singlecrystal semiconductor nanostructures. On the template layer, epitaxial information associated with its short-range atomic order is available within the size of area that is comparable to that of a nanostructure in the early stage of evolution. In this particular demonstration, hydrogenated silicon was utilized to provide short-range atomic order required for epitaxial growth of indium phosphide nanowires. Indium phosphide nanowires were grown on the hydrogenated silicon surfaces by low-pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition with the presence of colloidal gold nanoparticles. The hydrogenated silicon used as a template layer and the resulting indium phosphide nanowires were systematically studied.