Catalyst design for native oxide based selective area InP nanowire growth

E-beam lithography based nanowire catalysts are defined by a two dimensional parameter space, spanned by metallization thickness and resist pinhole diameter. We report that native oxide based selective area nanowire growth allowed reducing the metallization thickness of catalysts down to 1/20 of the resist pinhole diameter, without thermal catalyst splitting; contrary to native oxide free nanowire growth, where catalyst splitting is a limiting effect. This parameter space allows growing similar-diameter nanowires, by two different parameter sets. In one such case, nanowires of about 50 nm grew at considerably different rates determined by the metallization thickness; indicating that at given conditions, nanowire diameter does not solely determine nanowire growth rate.