The effect of low temperature AlN interlayers on the growth of GaN epilayer on Si (111) by MOCVD

Low temperature (LT) AlN interlayers were used to effectively reduce the tension stress and micro-cracks on the surface of the GaN epilayer grown on Si (111) substrate. Optical Microscopy (OM), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), Surface Electron Microscopy (SEM) and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) were employed to characterize these samples grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). In addition, wet etching method was used to evaluate the defect of the GaN epilayer. The results demonstrate that the morphology and crystalline properties of the GaN epilayer strongly depend on the thickness, interlayer number and growth temperature of the LT AlN interlayer. With the optimized LT AlN interlayer structures, high quality GaN epilayers with a low crack density can be obtained. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Electroluminescence from nano-crystalline Si/SiO2 structures embedded in pn junctions

Phosphorous-doped and boron-doped amorphous Si thin films as well as amorphous SiO2/Si/SiO2 sandwiched structures were prepared in a plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition system. Then, the p-i-n structures containing nano-crystalline Si/SiO2 sandwiched structures as the intrinsic layer were prepared in situ followed by thermal annealing. Electroluminescence spectra were measured at room temperature under forward bias, and it is found that the electroluminescence intensity is strongly influenced by the types of substrate. The turn-on voltages can be reduced to 3 V for samples prepared on heavily doped p-type Si (p(+)-Si) substrates and the corresponding electroluminescence intensity is more than two orders of magnitude stronger than that on lightly doped p-type Si (p-Si) and ITO glass substrates. The improvements of light emission can be ascribed to enhanced hole injection and the consequent recombination of electron-hole pairs in the luminescent nanocrystalline Si/SiO2 system. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Electronic states of InAs/GaAs tyre-shape quantum ring

In the framework of the effective mass theory, this paper calculates the electron energy levels of an InAs/GaAs tyre-shape quantum ring (TSQR) by using the plane wave basis. The results show that the electron energy levels are sensitively dependent on the TSQR's section thickness d, and insensitively dependent on TSQR's section inner radius R-1 and TSQR's inner radius R-2. The model and results provide useful information for the design and fabrication of InAs/GaAs TSQRs.

Fabrication and characterization of active and sequential circuits utilizing Schottky-wrap-gate-controlled GaAs hexagonal nanowire network structures

For realization of hexagonal BDD-based digital systems, active and sequential circuits including inverters, flip flops and ring oscillators are designed and fabricated on GaAs-based hexagonal nanowire networks controlled by Schottky wrap gates (WPGs), and their operations are characterized. Fabricated inverters show comparatively high transfer gain of more than 10. Clear and correct operation of hexagonal set-reset flip flops (SR-FFs) is obtained at room temperature. Fabricated hexagonal D-type flip flop (D-FF) circuits integrating twelve WPG field effect transistors (FETs) show capturing input signal by triggering although the output swing is small. Oscillatory output is successfully obtained in a fabricated 7-stage hexagonal ring oscillator. Obtained results confirm that a good possibility to realize practical digital systems can be implemented by the present circuit approach.

Optical study of lateral carrier transfer in (In,Ga)As/GaAs quantum-dot chains

We have studied the lateral carrier transfer in a specially designed quantum dot chain structure by means of time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) and polarization PL. The PL decay time increases with temperature, following the T-1/2 law for the typical one-dimensional quantum system. The decay time depends strongly on the emission energy: it decreases as the photon energy increases. Moreover, a strong polarization anisotropy is observed. These results are attributed to the efficient lateral transfer of carriers along the chain direction. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics.

Voltage tunable two-color InAs/GaAs quantum dot infrared photodetector

We report a bias voltage tunable two-color InAs/GaAs quantum dot infrared photodetector working under the normal incidence infared irradiation. The two-color detection of our device is realized by combining a photovoltaic and a photoconductive response by bias voltage tuning. The photovoltaic response is attributed to the transition of electron from the ground state to a high continuum state. The photoconductive response arises from the transition of electron from the ground state to the wetting layer state through the barrier via Fowler-Nordheim tunneling evidenced by a broad feature of the photocurrent peak on the high energy side. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.

Anisotropic exchange splitting of excitons in (001)GaAs/Al0.3Ga0.7As superlattice studied by reflectance difference spectroscopy

Anisotropic exchange splitting (AES) is induced by the joint effects of the electron-hole exchange interaction and the symmetry reduction in quantum wells and quantum dots. A model has been developed to quantitatively obtain the electron-hole exchange energy and the hole-mixing energy of quantum wells and superlattices. In this model, the AES and the degree of polarization can both be obtained from the reflectance difference spectroscopy. Thus the electron-hole exchange energy and the hole-mixing energy can be completely separated and quantitatively deduced. By using this model, a (001)5 nm GaAs/7 nm Al0.3Ga0.7As superlattice sample subjected to [110] uniaxial strains has been investigated in detail. The n=1 heavy-hole (1H1E) exciton can be analyzed by this model. We find that the AES of quantum wells can be linearly tuned by the [110] uniaxial strains. The small uniaxial strains can only influence the hole-mixing interaction of quantum wells, but have almost no contribution to the electron-hole exchange interaction. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics.

Multiple valley couplings in nanometer Si metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors

We investigate the couplings between different energy band valleys in a metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) device using self-consistent calculations of million-atom Schrodinger-Poisson equations. Atomistic empirical pseudopotentials are used to describe the device Hamiltonian and the underlying bulk band structure. The MOSFET device is under nonequilibrium condition with a source-drain bias up to 2 V and a gate potential close to the threshold potential. We find that all the intervalley couplings are small, with the coupling constants less than 3 meV. As a result, the system eigenstates derived from different bulk valleys can be calculated separately. This will significantly reduce the simulation time because the diagonalization of the Hamiltonian matrix scales as the third power of the total number of basis functions. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.

Direct observation of coherent spin transfer processes in an InGaAs/GaAs quantum well via two-color time-resolved Kerr rotation measurements

A two-color time-resolved Kerr rotation spectroscopy system was built, with a femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser and a photonic crystal fiber, to study coherent spin transfer processes in an InGaAs/GaAs quantum well sample. The femtosecond Ti:sapphire laser plays two roles: besides providing a pump beam with a tunable wavelength, it also excites the photonic crystal fiber to generate supercontinuum light ranging from 500 nm to 1600 nm, from which a probe beam with a desirable wavelength is selected with a suitable interference filter. With such a system, we studied spin transfer processes between two semiconductors of different gaps in an InGaAs/GaAs quantum well sample. We found that electron spins generated in the GaAs barrier were transferred coherently into the InGaAs quantum well. A model based on rate equations and Bloch-Torrey equations is used to describe the coherent spin transfer processes quantitatively. With this model, we obtain an effective electron spin accumulation time of 21 ps in the InGaAs quantum well.

Study of GaN growth on ultra-thin Si membranes

10 mu m-thick ultra-thin Si (111) membranes for GaN epi-layers growth were successfully fabricated on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate by backside etching the handle Si and buried oxide (BOX) layer. Then 1 mu m-thick GaN layers were deposited on these Si membranes by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The crack-free areas of 250 mu m, x 250 mu m were obtained on the GaN layers due to the reduction of thermal stress by using these ultra-thin Si membranes, which was further confirmed by the photoluminescence (PL) spectra and the simulation results from the finite element method calculation by using the software of ANSYS. In this paper, a newly developed approach was demonstrated to utilize micromechanical structures for GaN growth, which would improve the material quality of the epi-layers and facilitate GaN-based micro electro-mechanical system (MEMS) fabrication, especially the pressure sensor, in the future applications. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Fabrication and excitation-power-density-dependent micro-photoluminescence of hexagonal nanopillars with a single InGaAs/GaAs quantum well

Hexagonal nanopillars with a single InGaAs/GaAs quantum well (QW) were fabricated on a GaAs (111) B substrate by selective-area metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy. The standard deviations in diameter and height of the nanopillars are about 2% and 5%, respectively. Zincblende structure and rotation twins were identified in both the GaAs and the InGaAs layers by electron diffraction. The excitation-power-density-dependent micro-photoluminescence (mu-PL) of the nanopillars was measured at 4.2, 50, 100 and 150 K. It was shown that, with increasing excitation power density, the mu-PL peak's positions shift to a higher energy, and their intensity and width increase, which were rationalized using a model that includes the effects of piezoelectricity, photon-screening and band-filling. It was also revealed that the rotation twins significantly reduce the diffusion length of the carriers in the nanopillars, compared to that in the regular semiconductors.

The influence of low-temperature Ge seed layer on growth of high-quality Ge epilayer on Si(100) by ultrahigh vacuum chemical vapor deposition

High-quality Ge epilayer on Si(1 0 0) substrate with an inserted low-temperature Ge seed layer and a thin Si0.77Ge0.23 layer was grown by ultrahigh vacuum chemical vapor deposition. The epitaxial Ge layer with surface root-mean-square roughness of 0.7 nm and threading dislocation density of 5 x 10(5) cm(-2) was obtained. The influence of low temperature Ge seed layer on the quality of Ge epilayer was investigated. We demonstrated that the relatively higher temperature (350 degrees C) for the growth of Ge seed layer significantly improved the crystal quality and the Hall hole mobility of the Ge epilayer. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Effects of accumulated strain on the surface and optical properties of stacked 1.3 mu m InAs/GaAs quantum dot structures

We report the effects of accumulated strain by stacking on the surface and optical properties of stacked 1.3 mu m InAs/GaAs quantum dot (QD) structures grown by MOCVD. It is found that the surface of the stacked QD structures becomes more and more undulated with stacking, due to the increased strain in the stacked QD structures with stacking. The photoluminescence intensity from the QD structures first increases as the stacking number increases from 1 to 3 and then dramatically decreases as it further increases, implying a significant increase in the density of crystal defects in the stacked QD structures due to the accumulated strain. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the strain can be reduced by simply introducing annealing steps just after growing the GaAs spacers during the deposition of the stacked QD structures, leading to significant improvement in the surface and optical properties of the structures. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

First-principles study of transition metal impurities in Si

By using ab initio electronic structure calculations within density functional theory, we study the structural, electronic, and magnetic properties of Si doped with a transition metal impurity. We consider the transition metals of the 3d series V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, and Ni. To get insight into the level filling mechanism and the magnetization saturation, we first investigate the transition metal-Si alloys in the zinc-blende structure. Next, we investigate the doping of bulk Si with a transition metal atom, in which it occupies the substitutional site, the interstitial site with tetrahedral symmetry, and the interstitial site with hexagonal symmetry. It is found that all of these transition metal impurities prefer an interstitial position in Si. Furthermore, we show that it is possible to interpret the electronic and magnetic properties by using a simple level filling picture and a comparison is made to Ge doped with the same transition metal atoms. In order to get insight into the effect of a strained environment, we calculate the formation energy as a function of an applied homogeneous pressure and we show that an applied pressure can stabilize the substitutional position of transition metal impurities in Si. Finally, the energies of the ferromagnetic states are compared to those of the antiferromagnetic states. It is shown that the interstitial site of the Mn dopant helps us to stabilize the nearest neighbor substitutional site to realize the ferromagnetic state. For doping of Si with Cr, a ferrimagnetic behavior is predicted.

Ultrafast carrier dynamics in undoped and p-doped InAs/GaAs quantum dots characterized by pump-probe reflection measurements

We investigate the dependence of the differential reflection on the structure parameters of quantum dot (QD) heterostructures in pump-probe reflection measurements by both numerical simulations based on the finite-difference time-domain technique and theoretical calculations based on the theory of dielectric films. It is revealed that the value and sign of the differential reflection strongly depend on the thickness of the cap layer and the QD layer. In addition, a comparison between the carrier dynamics in undoped and p-doped InAs/GaAs QDs is carried out by pump-probe reflection measurements. The carrier capture time from the GaAs barrier into the InAs wetting layer and that from the InAs wetting layer into the InAs QDs are extracted by appropriately fitting differential reflection spectra. Moreover, the dependence of the carrier dynamics on the injected carrier density is identified. A detailed analysis of the carrier dynamics in the undoped and p-doped QDs based on the differential reflection spectra is presented, and its difference with that derived from the time-resolved photoluminescence is discussed. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics.