Neutron irradiation effect in two-dimensional electron gas of AlGaN/GaN heterostructures

AlGaN/GaN heterostructures have been irradiated by neutrons with different influences and characterized by means of temperature-dependent Hall measurements and Micro-Raman scattering techniques. It is found that the carrier mobility of two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) is very sensitive to neutrons. At a low influence of 6.13 x 10(15) cm(-2), the carrier mobility drops sharply, while the sheet carrier density remains the same as that of an unirradiated sample. Moreover, even for a fluence of up to 3.66 x 10(16) cm(-2), the sheet carrier density shows only a slight drop. We attribute the degradation of the figure-of-merit (product of n(s) x mu) of 2DEG to the defects induced by neutron irradiation. Raman measurements show that neutron irradiation does not yield obvious change to the strain state of AlGaN/GaN heterostructures, which proves that degradation of sheet carrier density has no relation to strain relaxation in the present study. The increase of the product of n(s) x mu of 2DEG during rapid thermal annealing processes at relatively high temperature has been attributed to the activation of Ge-Ga transmuted from Ga and the recovery of displaced defects.

Transfer and detection of single electrons using metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors

A single-electron turnstile and electrometer circuit was fabricated on a silicon-on-insulator substrate. The turnstile, which is operated by opening and closing two metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) alternately, allows current quantization at 20 K due to single-electron transfer. Another MOSFET is placed at the drain side of the turnstile to form an electron storage island. Therefore, one-by-one electron entrance into the storage island from the turnstile can be detected as an abrupt change in the current of the electrometer, which is placed near the storage island and electrically coupled to it. The correspondence between the quantized current and the single-electron counting was confirmed.

Effects of phase-breaking on long-range charge transfer in DNA: Partially-coherent-tunneling model study

The mechanism of hole charge transfer in DNA of various lengths and sequences is investigated based on a partially coherent tunneling theory (Zhang et al., J Chem Phys 117:4578, 2002), where the effects of phase-breaking in adenine-thymine and guanine-cytosine base pairs are treated on equal foot. This work aims at providing a self-consistent microscopic interpretation for rate experiments on various DNA systems. We will also clarify the condition under which the simple superexchange-mediated-hopping picture is valid, and make some comments on the further development of present theory.

Hydrogen related defects in neutron-irradiated silicon grown in hydrogen ambient

Isochronal thermal-annealing behavior of NTD floating-zone silicon grown in hydrogen ambient (called NTD FZ(H) Si) is presented. The dependencies of resistivity and carrier mobility on annealing temperature are determined by room-temperature Hall electrical measurements. Using infrared absorption spectroscopy, hydrogen-related infrared absorption bands evolution for NTD FZ(H) Si were measured in detail. It is demonstrated that compared with NTD FZ(Ar) Si, NTD FZ(H) Si exhibits the striking features upon isochronal annealing in temperature range of 150 similar to 650 degreesC: there appears the formation of an excessive shallow donor at annealing temperature of 500 degreesC. It is shown that the annealing behavior is directly related to the reaction of hydrogen and irradiation-induced defects. The evolution of infrared absorption bands upon temperature reflects a series of complex reaction process: irradiation-induced defects decomposition, breaking of Si-H bonds, migration and aggregation of atomic hydrogen, and formation of the secondary defects. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Storage of photoexcited electron-hole pairs in an AlAs/GaAs heterostructure created by electron transfer in real and kappa spaces

The storage of photoexcited electron-hole pairs is experimentally carried out and theoretically realized by transferring electrons in both real and k spaces through resonant Gamma - X in an AlAs/GaAs heterostructure. This is proven by the peculiar capacitance jump and hysteresis in the measured capacitance-voltage curves. Our structure may be used as a photonic memory cell with a long storage time and a fast retrieval of photons as well.

A partially incoherent rate theory of long-range charge transfer in deoxyribose nucleic acid

A quantum chemistry based Green's function formulation of long-range charge transfer in deoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA) double helix is proposed. The theory takes into account the effects of DNA's electronic structure and its incoherent interaction with aqueous surroundings. In the implementation, the electronic tight-binding parameters for unsolvated DNA molecules are determined at the HF/6-31G* level, while those for individual nucleobase-water couplings are at a semiempirical level by fitting with experimental redox potentials. Numerical results include that: (i) the oxidative charge initially at the donor guanine site does hop sequentially over all guanine sites; however, the revealed rates can be of a much weaker distance dependence than that described by the ordinary Ohm's law; (ii) the aqueous surroundings-induced partial incoherences in thymine/adenine bridge bases lead them to deviate substantially from the superexchange regime; (iii) the time scale of the partially incoherent hole transport through the thymine/adenine pi stack in DNA is about 5 ps. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.

Interplay between partial incoherence, partial inelasticity, resonance, and heterogeneity in long-range electron transfer and transport

A generalized scattering matrix formalism is constructed to elucidate the interplay of electron resonance, coherence, dephasing, inelastic scattering, and heterogeneity, which play important roles in the physics of long-range electron transfer/transport. The theory consists of an extension of the standard Buttiker phase-breaking model and an analytical expression of the electron transmission coefficient for donor-bridge-acceptor systems with arbitrary length and sequence. The theory incorporates the following features: Dephasing-assisted off-resonance enhancement, inelasticity-induced turnover, resonance enhancement and its dephasing-induced suppression, dephasing-induced smooth superexchange-hopping transition, and heterogeneity effects. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.

Scattering matrix approach to electronic dephasing in long-range electron transfer

Based on the Buttiker dephasing model, we propose an analytical scattering matrix approach to the long-range electron transfer phenomena. The present efficient scheme smoothly interpolates between the superexchange and the sequential hopping mechanisms. Various properties such as the drastic dephasing-assisted enhancement and turnover behaviors are demonstrated in good agreement with those obtained via the dynamical reduced density-matrix methods. These properties are further elucidated as results of the interplay among the dephasing strength, the tunneling parameter, and the bridge length of the electron transfer system. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.

Different transfer paths for thermally activated electrons and holes in self-organized Ge/Si(001) islands in a multilayer structure

We investigated the temperature dependence (10-250 K) of the photoluminescence (PL) emission spectrum of self-organized Ge/Si(001) islands in a multilayer structure. With elevated temperature, we find that the thermally activated holes and electrons are gathered by the Ge islands in different ways. The holes drift from the wetting layer into the islands, while the electrons, confined in Si due to type-II band alignment, leak into the Ge islands by the electrostatic interaction with the holes accumulated there. It results in an increase of the integrated intensity of island-related PL at a certain temperature range and a reduction of the phonon energy in the phonon-assisted PL of the islands by involving a type-I transition into a type-II transition. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.

Excitation transfer in vertically self-organized pairs of unequal-sized InAs/GaAs quantum dots

The excitation transfer processes in vertically self organized pairs of unequal-sized quantum dots (QD's), which are created in InAs/GaAs bilayers with different InAs deposition amounts in the first and second layers, have been investigated experimentally by photoluminescence technique. The distance between the two dot layers is varied from 3 to 12 nm. The optical properties of the formed pairs of unequal-sized QD's with clearly discernible ground-state transition energy depend on the spacer thickness. When the spacer layer of GaAs is thin enough, only one photoluminescence peak related to the large QD ensemble has been observed as a result of strong electronic coupling in the InAs QD pairs. The results provide evidence for nonresonant energy transfer from the smaller QDs in the second layer to the larger QD's in the first layer in such an asymmetric QD pair.

Mechanism on exciton-mediated energy transfer in erbium-doped silicon

Exciton-mediated energy transfer model in Er-doped silicon was presented. The emission intensity is related to optically active Er concentration, lifetime of excited Er3+ ion and spontaneous emission. The thermal quenching of the Er luminescence in Si is caused by thermal ionization of Er-bound exciton complex and nonradiative energy back-transfer processes, which correspond to the activation energy of 6.6 and 47.4 meV, respectively. Er doping in silicon introduces donor states, a large enhancement in the electrical activation of Er (up to two orders of magnitude) is obtained by co-implanting Er with O. It appears that the donor states are the gateway to the optically active Er. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Improved neutron radiation hardness for Si detectors: Application of low resistivity starting material and or manipulation of N-eff by selective filling of radiation-induced traps at low temperatures

Radiation-induced electrical changes in both space charge region (SCR) of Si detectors and bulk material (BM) have been studied for samples of diodes and resistors made on Si materials with different initial resistivities. The space charge sign inversion fluence (Phi(inv)) has been found to increase linearly with the initial doping concentration (the reciprocal of the resistivity), which gives improved radiation hardness to Si detectors fabricated from low resistivity material. The resistivity of the BM, on the other hand, has been observed to increase with the neutron fluence and approach a saturation value in the order of hundreds k Omega cm at high fluences, independent of the initial resistivity and material type. However, the fluence (Phi(s)), at which the resistivity saturation starts, increases with the initial doping concentrations and the value of Phi(s) is in the same order of that of Phi(inv) for all resistivity samples. Improved radiation hardness can also be achieved by the manipulation of the space charge concentration (N-eff) in SCR, by selective filling and/or freezing at cryogenic temperatures the charge state of radiation-induced traps, to values that will give a much smaller full depletion voltage. Models have been proposed to explain the experimental data.

First charge collection and position-precision data on the medium-resistivity silicon strip detectors before and after neutron irradiation up to 2x10(14) n/cm(2)

Test strip detectors of 125 mu m, 500 mu m, and 1 mm pitches with about 1 cm(2) areas have been made on medium-resistivity silicon wafers (1.3 and 2.7 k Ohm cm). Detectors of 500 mu m pitch have been tested for charge collection and position precision before and after neutron irradiation (up to 2 x 10(14) n/cm(2)) using 820 and 1030 nm laser lights with different beam-spot sizes. It has been found that for a bias of 250 V a strip detector made of 1.3 k Ohm cm (300 mu m thick) can be fully depleted before and after an irradiation of 2 x 10(14) n/cm(2). For a 500 mu m pitch strip detector made of 2.7 k Ohm cm tested with an 1030 nm laser light with 200 mu m spot size, the position reconstruction error is about 14 mu m before irradiation, and 17 mu m after about 1.7 x 10(13) n/cm(2) irradiation. We demonstrated in this work that medium resistivity silicon strip detectors can work just as well as the traditional high-resistivity ones, but with higher radiation tolerance. We also tested charge sharing and position reconstruction using a 1030 nm wavelength (300 mu m absorption length in Si at RT) laser, which provides a simulation of MIP particles in high-physics experiments in terms of charge collection and position reconstruction, (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Neutron irradiation-infrared based measurement method for interstitial oxygen in heavily boron-doped silicon

A novel method, based on an infrared absorption and neutron irradiation technique, has been developed for the determination of interstitial oxygen in heavily boron-doped silicon. The new procedure utilizes fast neutron irradiated silicon wafer specimens. On fast neutron irradiation, the free carriers of high concentration in silicon can be trapped by the irradiated defects and the resistivity increased. The resulting calibration curve for the measurement of interstitial oxygen in boron-doped silicon has been established on the basis of the annealing behaviour of irradiated boron-doped CZ silicon.

Intrawell and interwell transfer of excitons in growth-interrupted quantum wells

Intrawell and interwell transfers of excitons are observed by a temperature-dependent continuous-wave photoluminescence study of growth-interrupted single quantum wells. The intrawell transfer among the interface localization areas suggests a thermodynamic equilibrium between energy relaxation via LO-phonon emission and thermal population via phonon absorption. Thermal population is dominant in wider wells while relaxation is clearly observable in a four-monolayer narrow well at low temperatures. Interwell transfer of excitons also occurs between two narrow wells. (C) 1998 Academic Press.