Controlled Nucleation of GaN Nanowires Grown with Molecular Beam Epitaxy

The location of GaN nanowires is controlled with essentially perfect selectivity using patterned SiNx prior to molecular beam epitaxy growth. Nanowire growth is uniform within mask openings and absent on the mask surface for over 95% of the usable area of a 76 mm diameter substrate. The diameters of the resulting nanowires are controlled by the size of the mask openings. Openings of approximately 500 nm or less produce single nanowires with symmetrically faceted tips. GaN nanowires are grown with near perfect size and placement control with catalyst‐free molecular beam epitaxy. This new methodology for selective epitaxy on silicon substrates achieved periodic array structures and dimension control to better than 2%, which in turn enables a number of photonic and sensor applications.