Controlled growth of gallium nitride single-crystal nanowires using a chemical vapor deposition method

Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) using gold nanoparticles as the catalyst to grow high-quality single-crystal gallium nitride nanowires was developed.. This method enables control over several important aspects of the growth, including control of the nanowire diameter by using monodispersed gold clusters, control of the nanowire location via e-beam patterning of the catalyst sites, and control of the nanowire orientation via epitaxial growth on a-plane sapphire substrates. Our work opens up new ways to use GaN nanowires as nanobuilding blocks.