Photocurrent enhancement and magnetoresistance in indium phosphide single nanowire by zinc doping

We report the fabrication of intrinsic and Zn-doped InP single nanowire devices by the vapor-liquid-solid and photolithography techniques. Nanowires with a zincblend structure around 100 nm in radius and length at the micrometer scale were readily observed. Electrical measurements of samples containing single nanowires revealed Ohmic and Schottky behavior for the intrinsic and Zn-doped InP devices respectively. The Zn-doped InP device exhibited a thermal and optical dependence with high photosensitivity, whose main conduction mechanism for temperatures ranging from 160 K to 300 K was verified to be variable range hopping, displaying a hopping distance on the order of 240 nm at a low temperature. Strong temperature-dependent positive magnetoresistance was verified for this device.