III/V semiconductor
nanostructures have significant potential in
device applications, but effective surface passivation is critical
due to their large surface-to-volume ratio. For InP such passivation
has proven particularly difficult, with substantial depassivation generally observed following dielectric deposition on InP surfaces.
We present a novel approach based on passivation with a phosphorus-rich
interfacial oxide deposited using a low-temperature process, which
is critical to avoid P-desorption. For this purpose we have chosen
a POx layer deposited in a plasma-assisted
atomic layer deposition (ALD) system at room temperature. Since POx is known to be hygroscopic and therefore
unstable in atmosphere, we encapsulate this layer with a thin ALD
Al2O3 capping layer to form a POx/Al2O3 stack. This passivation
scheme is capable of improving the photoluminescence (PL) efficiency
of our state-of-the-art wurtzite (WZ) InP nanowires by a factor of
∼20 at low excitation. If we apply the rate equation analysis
advocated by some authors, we derive a PL internal quantum efficiency
(IQE) of 75% for our passivated wires at high excitation. Our results
indicate that it is more reliable to calculate the IQE as the ratio
of the integrated PL intensity at room temperature to that at 10 K.
By this means we derive an IQE of 27% for the passivated wires at
high excitation (>10 kW cm–2), which constitutes
an unprecedented level of performance for undoped InP nanowires. This
conclusion is supported by time-resolved PL decay lifetimes, which
are also shown to be significantly higher than previously reported
for similar wires. The passivation scheme displays excellent long-term
stability (>7 months) and is additionally shown to substantially
improve
the thermal stability of InP surfaces (>300 °C), significantly
expanding the temperature window for device processing. Such effective
surface passivation is a key enabling technology for InP nanowire
devices such as nanolasers and solar cells.