Different Doping Behaviors of Silicon in Zinc Blende and Wurtzite GaAs Nanowires: Implications for Crystal-Phase Device Design

Crystal-phase engineering between zinc blende (ZB) and wurtzite (WZ) structures is becoming an important method in designing unique optoelectronic and electronic semiconductor devices. Doping to engineer their electric properties is thus of critical importance, but a direct experimental comparison in doping these two crystal structures is still missing. Nanowires (NWs) allow the coexistence of both structures due to their special growth mode. The differences in dopant incorporation between the two phases are studied here in GaAs NW shells that are coherently grown around the NWs, hence maintaining the crystal structure of the core. The Si dopant is observed to have a higher incorporation efficiency into the WZ structure due to a 2 times lower incorporation energy compared with that of the ZB structure. Besides, it can also be predicted that Si is more inclined toward Ga sites in both structures. Indeed, the As-site doping energy of the WZ structure is several orders of magnitude higher than that of Ga sites, allowing a lower doping compensation effect. This work provides useful information for doping control and hence designing crystal-phase devices.