Recent advances in semiconductor nanowire heterostructures

Semiconductor nanowires have made a deep impact on materials science related research, and are being explored for applications in several disciplines. Many of these applications require heterostructures, which can be defined as the combination of two or more materials within the same nanowire structure. In this paper we briefly review the current state-of-the-art concerning epitaxial nanowire heterostructures. We discuss growth, understanding, and promising applications of such structures, which we divide into three categories: nanowire-substrate, axial, and radial heterostructures. For each of these categories, we review recent experimental results, and address possible difficulties and how they have been resolved. In addition, we also highlight interesting applications relying on heterostructures in nanowires. To illustrate that nanowires and their heterostructures have been grown in a plethora of materials, we pick examples from a wide range of semiconductor materials. © 2011 The Royal Society of Chemistry.