Exploring Au Droplet Motion in Nanowire Growth: A Simple Route toward Asymmetric GaP Morphologies

Here we show a new nanowire growth procedure, exploring the thermally activated motion of Au droplets on III–V surfaces. We show that by setting a single growth parameter we can activate the crawling motion of Au droplets in vacuum and locally modify surface composition in order to enhance vapor–solid (VS) growth along oxide-free areas on the trail of the metal particle. Asymmetric VS growth rates are comparable in magnitude to the vapor–liquid–solid growth, producing unconventional wurtzite GaP morphologies, which shows negligible defect density as well as optical signal in the green spectral region. Finally, we demonstrate that this effect can also be explored in different substrate compositions and orientations with the final shape finely tuned by group III flow and nanoparticle size. This distinct morphology for wurtzite GaP nanomaterials can be interesting for the design of nanophotonics devices