Growth of wurtzite InP nanowires

Artificial modification of crystal structure in the semiconductor nanowires should be very significant in designing novel nanoelectronic devices as well as for new understanding of the crystal growth mechanism in such nanoscale geometries. Here we report the wafer scale uniform growth of one-dimensional (1D) InP nanowires in their quantum regime in the metastable wurtzite phase. The objective has been to grow vertically well aligned and densely distributed InP nanowires in their higher energy configurational structure for 3D device architecture under the bottom-up approach. Due to the change in crystal structure from the cubic zinc blende to the hexagonal wurtzite phase, the basic physical properties of the crystal are also modified and their controlled growth will provide a new degree of freedom in fabricating new quantum devices.