Anomalous phase transition of InN nanowires under high pressure

Uniform InN nanowires were studied under pressures up to 35.5 GPa by using in situ synchrotron radiation x-ray diffraction technique at room temperature. An anomalous phase transition behavior has been discovered. Contrary to the results in the literature, which indicated that InN undergoes a fully reversible phase transition from the wurtzite structure to the rocksalt type structure, the InN nanowires in this study unusually showed a partially irreversible phase transition. The released sample contained the metastable rocksalt phase as well as the starting wurtzite one. The experimental findings of this study also reveal the potentiality of high pressure techniques to synthesize InN nanomaterials with the metastable rocksalt type structure, in addition to the generally obtained zincblende type one.