Electron transport in InAs nanowires and heterostructure nanowire devices

Nanowires in the InAs/InP material system are grown with catalyst-assisted chemical beam epitaxy. Ohmic contacts are then fabricated to selected wires, allowing electron transport measurements to be carried out at room-temperature as well as at low T. InAs nanowires show strong quantum confinement effects, where thin wires (<30 nm) are depleted from carriers. Measurements on InAs wires with a quantum point contact configuration indicate a scattering length in the order of 100 nm. Heterostructure barriers of InP are also incorporated into InAs wires to produce resonant tunneling diodes and single-electron transistors (SETs) with different dot lengths. Wires containing dots with a length of 100 nm function as ideal SETs, whereas the transport in wires with 15 nm long dots is strongly governed by quantum confinement and resonant tunneling. For the smaller dots it is possible to observe electron transport through excited states.