Multi-wafer 3C-SiC heteroepitaxial growth on Si(100) substrates

Epitaxial growth of semiconductor films in multiple-wafer mode is under vigorous development in order to improve yield output to meet the industry increasing demands. Here we report on results of the heteroepitaxial growth of multi-wafer 3C-SiC films on Si(100) substrates by employing a home-made horizontal hot wall low pressure chemical vapour deposition (HWLPCVD) system which was designed to be have a high-throughput, multi-wafer (3x2-inch) capacity. 3C-SiC film properties of the intra-wafer and the wafer-to-wafer including crystalline morphologies, structures and electronics are characterized systematically. The undoped and the moderate NH3 doped n-type 3C-SiC films with specular surface are grown in the HWLPCVD, thereafter uniformities of intra-wafer thickness and sheet resistance of the 3C-SiC films are obtained to be 6%similar to 7% and 6.7%similar to 8%, respectively, and within a run, the deviations of wafer-to-wafer thickness and sheet resistance are less than 1% and 0.8%, respectively.

Gate controlled Aharonov-Bohm-type oscillations from single neutral excitons in quantum rings

We report on a magnetophotoluminescence study of single self-assembled semiconductor nanorings which are fabricated by molecular-beam epitaxy combined with AsBr3 in situ etching. Oscillations in the neutral exciton radiative recombination energy and in the emission intensity are observed under an applied magnetic field. Further, we control the period of the oscillations with a gate potential that modifies the exciton confinement. We infer from the experimental results, combined with calculations, that the exciton Aharonov-Bohm effect may account for the observed effects.

Evaluating the effect of dislocation on the photovoltaic performance of metamorphic tandem solar cells

The photovoltaic conversion efficiency for monolithic GaInP/GaInAs/Ge triple-junction cell with various bandgap combination (300 suns, AM1.5d) was theoretically calculated. An impressive improvement on conversion efficiency was observed for a bandgap combination of 1.708, 1.194, and 0.67 eV. A theoretical investigation was carried out on the effect of dislocation on the metamorphic structure's efficiency by regarding dislocation as minority-carrier recombination center. The results showed that only when dislocation density was less than 1.6x10(6) cm(-2), can this metamorphic combination exhibit its efficiency advantage over the fully-matched combination. In addition, we also briefly evaluated the lattice misfit dependence of the dislocation density for a group of metamorphic triple-junction system, and used it as guidance for the choice of the proper cell structure.

Strong circular photogalvanic effect in ZnO epitaxial films

We report a strong circular photogalvanic effect (CPGE) in ZnO epitaxial films under interband excitation. It is observed that CPGE current is as large as 100 nA/W in ZnO, which is about one order in magnitude higher than that in InN film while the CPGE currents in GaN films are not detectable. The possible reasons for the above observations are the strong spin orbit coupling in ZnO or the inversed valence band structure of ZnO.

Photoexcited charge current for the presence of pure spin current

The asymmetric spin distribution in k space caused by the pure spin current (PSC) can introduce a photoexcited charge current (PECC). This provides us a practical scheme for direct detection of PSC. We demonstrate theoretically that the PECC related to the PSC depends sensitively on the wave vector and spin orientation of the carriers, more important, the helicity dependence of this PECC provides us a way to refine it from the helicity independent background current by tuning the polarized laser beams from left to right circular polarization.

Abnormal temperature dependent photoluminescence of self-assembled InAs/GaAs surface quantum dots with high areal density

We have investigated temperature dependent photoluminescence of both buried and surface self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots with an areal density up to similar to 10(11)/cm(2). Different from the buried quantum dots, the peak energy of surface quantum dots shows a blueshift relative to the bulk material variation from 15 to 130K. Besides the line width and the integrated intensity both first decrease and then increase in this temperature interval. The observed phenomena can be explained by carrier trapping effects by some shallow localized centers near the surface quantum dots.

Evaluation of thermal radiation dependent performance of GaSb thermophotovoltaic cell based on an analytical absorption coefficient model

Applying the model dielectric function method, we have expressed the absorption coefficient of GaSb analytically at room temperature relating to the contribution of various critical points of its electronic band structure. The calculated absorption spectrum shows good agreement with the reported experimental data obtained by spectral ellipsometry on nominally undoped sample. Based on this analytical absorption spectrum, we have qualitatively evaluated the response of active absorbing layer structure and its photoelectric conversion properties of GaSb thermophotovoltaic device on the perturbation of external thermal radiation induced by the varying radiator temperature or emissivity. Our calculation has demonstrated that desirable thickness to achieve the maximum conversion efficiency should be decreased with the increment of radiator temperature and the performance degradation brought by any structure deviation from its optimal one would be stronger meanwhile. For the popular radiator temperature, no more than 1500 K in a real solar thermophotovoltaic system, and typical doping profile in GaSb cell, a reasonable absorbing layer structure parameter should be controlled within 100-300 nm for the emitter while 3000-5000 nm for the base.