Growth of indium phosphide in porous alumina templates and application in photodetection devices

Due to its superior optoelectronic properties, indium phosphide (InP) has been successfully integrated in optoelectronic components, high-speed electronics and photovoltaics. With the modern surge of nanotechnology, the research on the synthesis of InP nanowires (NWs) has gained a lot of attention due to their physical properties. Different studies already reported the fabrication of InP NWs arrays via vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) and metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE). In this work, we report the experimental process towards the fabrication of a novel InP NWs array embedded in a porous anodized aluminum oxide (AAO) template. The use of AAO as templates for the NWs growth can avoid the use of lithographic processes, can address the unproductive charge recombination in the surface region of free-standing NWs, can allow the fabrication of compact and flexible devices and can potentially lead to the reduction of pixel sizes to sub-micrometric dimensions. The synthesis of InP in AAO has been explored via different growth techniques: plasma enhanced phosphorization (PEPh) and thermal phosphorization (TPh) of patterned electrodeposited indium, and VLS using templated electrodeposited gold as catalyst. Part of the research was dedicated to fabricating the templates for the growth process via anodizing and metal electrodeposition in the AAO structure. The study then reports the different growth conditions that were explored and the characterization of the samples. Monocrystalline InP NWs arrays were not ultimately produced, but data suggest the synthesis of InP. Electrochemical photodetector devices were fabricated to test the photo response of the obtained material.