Thermodynamic modelling of composition and crystal structure of ternary nanowires

An analytic expression for the composition of a ternary solid material nucleating from a quaternary liquid melt has been derived. This theory has been applied to Au-catalyzed and self-catalyzed, nucleation limited VLS growth of ternary III-V nanowires. Next, the developed model has been applied for the description of the composition dependence of the ZB/WZ polytypism in ternary nanowires.