Group-III nitrides and their alloys feature direct bandgaps covering a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum, making them a promising material system for various applications, such as solid state lighting, chemical/biological sensing, water splitting, medical diagnostics, and communications. In recent years, the growth of strain and defect-free group-III nitride vertical nanowires has exploded as an area of research. These nanowires, grown on various unconventional substrates, such as silicon and different metals, demonstrate potential advantages over their planar counterparts, including wavelength tunability to the near infrared and reduced efficiency droop. The low-profile and low power consumption of such nanowires also make them viable candidates for emerging applications, such as the Internet of things and artificial intelligence. Herein, we present a comprehensive review on the recent achievements made in the field of III-nitride nanowires. We compare and discuss the growth conditions and mechanisms involved in fabricating these structures via metalorganic chemical vapor deposition and molecular beam epitaxy. How the unique optical, electrical, and thermal properties of these nanowires are correlated with their growth conditions on various unconventional substrates is discussed, along with their respective applications, including light-emitting diodes, lasers, photodetectors, and photoelectrodes. Finally, we detail the remaining obstacles and challenges to fully exploit the potential of III-nitride nanowires for such practical applications.

An urgent challenge for the lighting research community is the lack of efficient optical devices emitting in between 500 and 600 nm, resulting in the “green-yellow gap”. In particular, true green (∼555 nm) and true yellow (∼590 nm), along with blue and red, constitute four technologically important colors. The III-nitride material system, being the most promising choice of platform to bridge this gap, still suffers from high dislocation density and poor crystal quality in realizing high-power, efficient devices. Particularly, the high polarization fields in the active region of such 2D quantum confined structures prevent efficient recombination of carriers. Here we demonstrate a true yellow nanowire (NW) light emitting diode (LED) with peak emission of 588 nm at 29.5 A/cm2 (75 mA in a 0.5 × 0.5 mm2 device) and a low turn-on voltage of ∼2.5 V, while having an internal quantum efficiency of 39%, and without “efficiency droop” up to an injection current density of 29.5 A/cm2. By mixing yellow light from a NW LED in reflective configuration with that of a red, green, and blue laser diode (LD), white light with a correlated color temperature of ∼6000 K and color-rendering index of 87.7 was achieved. The nitride-NW-based device offers a robust, long-term stability for realizing yellow light emitters for tunable color-rendering index solid-state lighting, on a scalable, low-cost, foundry-compatible titanium/silicon substrate, suitable for industry uptake.

A droop-free nitride light-emitting diode (LED) with the capacity to operate beyond the “green gap” has been a subject of intense scientific and engineering interest. While several properties of nanowires on silicon make them promising for use in LED development, the high aspect ratio of individual nanowires and their laterally discontinuous features limit phonon transport and device performance. Here, we report on the monolithic integration of metal heat-sink and droop-free InGaN/GaN quantum-disks-in-nanowire LEDs emitting at ∼710 nm. The reliable operation of our uncooled nanowire-LEDs (NW-LEDs) epitaxially grown on molybdenum was evident in the constant-current soft burn-in performed on a 380 μm × 380 μm LED. The square LED sustained 600 mA electrical stress over an 8 h period, providing stable light output at maturity without catastrophic failure. The absence of carrier and phonon transport barriers in NW-LEDs was further inferred from current-dependent Raman measurements (up to 700 mA), which revealed the low self-heating. The radiative recombination rates of NW-LEDs between room temperature and 40 °C was not limited by Shockley–Read–Hall recombination, Auger recombination, or carrier leakage mechanisms, thus realizing droop-free operation. The discovery of reliable, droop-free devices constitutes significant progress toward the development of nanowires for practical applications. Our monolithic approach realized a high-performance device that will revolutionize the way high power, low-junction-temperature LED lamps are manufactured for solid-state lighting and for applications in high-temperature harsh environment.