Epitaxial Growth of Aligned Semiconductor Nanowire Metamaterials for Photonic Applications

作者：Otto L. Muskens, Silke L. Diedenhofen, Maarten H. M. van Weert, Magnus T. Borgström, Erik P. A. M. Bakkers, Jaime Gómez Rivas · 发表于：Advanced Functional Materials · 年份：2008 · DOI：10.1002/adfm.200701337 · 被引用次数：61 · 研究领域：Nanowire Synthesis and Applications、GaN-based semiconductor devices and materials、Photonic and Optical Devices

Abstract A novel class of optical metamaterials is presented consisting of high densities of aligned gallium phosphide (GaP) nanowires fabricated using metal‐organic vapor phase‐epitaxy. Starting from a gold island film as a catalyst for nanowire growth, a sequential combination of vapor–liquid–solid and lateral growth modes is employed to obtain a continuous tunability of the nanowire volume fraction from 7% to over 35%. By choosing different crystallographic orientations of the GaP substrate, metamaterials are designed with different nanowire orientations. The anisotropy of the nanowire building blocks results in strong optical birefringence. Polarization interferometry demonstrates a very large polarization extinction contrast of 4 × 103 combined with a sharp angular resonance which holds promise for optical sensing. Nanowire metamaterials may find applications in photonics, optoelectronics, non‐linear and quantum optics, microfluidics, bio‐, and gas sensing.