Optically active gold-catalyzed ZnTe nanowires have been grown by molecular beam epitaxy, on a ZnTe(111) buffer layer, at low temperature 350\degree under Te rich conditions, and at ultra-low density (from 1 to 5 nanowires per micrometer^{2}. The crystalline structure is zinc blende as identified by transmission electron microscopy. All nanowires are tapered and the majority of them are <111> oriented. Low temperature micro-photoluminescence and cathodoluminescence experiments have been performed on single nanowires. We observe a narrow emission line with a blue-shift of 2 or 3 meV with respect to the exciton energy in bulk ZnTe. This shift is attributed to the strain induced by a 5 nm-thick oxide layer covering the nanowires, and this assumption is supported by a quantitative estimation of the strain in the nanowires.
@article{arxiv.1306.2858,
title = {Optical properties of single ZnTe nanowires grown at low temperature},
author = {Alberto Artioli and Pamela Rueda-Fonseca and Petr Stepanov and Edith Bellet-Amalric and Martien Den Hertog and Catherine Bougerol and Yann Genuist and Fabrice Donatini and Régis André and Gilles Nogues and Kuntheak Kheng and Serge Tatarenko and David Ferrand and Joel Cibert},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1306.2858},
year = {2014}
}