Growth of Inclined GaAs Nanowires by Molecular Beam Epitaxy: Theory and Experiment

The growth of inclined GaAs nanowires (NWs) during molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) on the rotating substrates is studied. The growth model provides explicitly the NW length as a function of radius, supersaturations, diffusion lengths and the tilt angle. Growth experiments are carried out on the GaAs(211)A and GaAs(111)B substrates. It is found that 20° inclined NWs are two times longer in average, which is explained by a larger impingement rate on their sidewalls. We find that the effective diffusion length at 550°C amounts to 12 nm for the surface adatoms and is more than 5,000 nm for the sidewall adatoms. Supersaturations of surface and sidewall adatoms are also estimated. The obtained results show the importance of sidewall adatoms in the MBE growth of NWs, neglected in a number of earlier studies.