Anomalous Strain Relaxation in Core–Shell Nanowire Heterostructures via Simultaneous Coherent and Incoherent Growth

Nanoscale substrates such as nanowires allow heterostructure design to venture well beyond the narrow lattice mismatch range restricting planar heterostructures, owing to misfit strain relaxing at the free surfaces and partitioning throughout the entire nanostructure. In this work, we uncover a novel strain relaxation process in GaAs/In_xGa_1-xAs core-shell nanowires that is a direct result of the nanofaceted nature of these nanostructures. Above …