Rational design and synthesis of nanowires with increasingly complex structures can yield enhanced and/or novel electronic and photonic functions^{1, 2}. For example, Ge/Si core/shell nanowires have exhibited substantially higher performance as field-effect transistors³ and low-temperature quantum devices^{4, 5} compared with homogeneous materials, and nano-roughened Si nanowires were recently shown to have an unusually high thermoelectric figure of merit⁶. Here, we report the first multi-quantum-well (MQW) core/shell nanowire heterostructures based on well-defined III-nitride materials that enable lasing over a broad range of wavelengths at room temperature. Transmission electron microscopy studies show that the triangular GaN nanowire cores enable epitaxial and dislocation-free growth of highly uniform (InGaN/GaN)_n quantum wells with n=3, 13 and 26 and InGaN well thicknesses of 1–3 nm. Optical excitation of individual MQW nanowire structures yielded lasing with InGaN quantum-well composition-dependent emission from 365 to 494 nm, and threshold dependent on quantum well number, n. Our work demonstrates a new level of complexity in nanowire structures, which potentially can yield free-standing injection nanolasers.

1. Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA
3. School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
4. Present address: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA (Y.L.); Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA (S.G.); Department of Physics, Korea University, Seoul 136-713, Korea (H.-G.P.)

Correspondence to: Zhong Lin Wang² e-mail: zhong.wang@mse.gatech.edu

Correspondence to: Charles M. Lieber^1,3 e-mail: cml@cmliris.harvard.edu

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