Readsorption Assisted Growth of InAs/InSb Heterostructured Nanowire Arrays

We present a study on the gold-assisted chemical beam epitaxy growth of InAs/InSb axial heterostructured nanowire (NW) arrays employing electron beam lithography defined patterns with highly controlled nanowire diameter and density. We observe that the growth rate of InSb increases with increasing nanowire density, opposite to the commonly observed behavior, in which the NWs compete for the incoming material and therefore their axial growth rate is typically reduced for high nanowire densities. To explain this puzzling behavior, we developed a model that includes the contribution of readsorption of desorbed material from the neighboring nanowire sidewalls. Our results show an innovative route to achieve dense nanowire arrays with a high growth rate.