Fabrication of 1.55μm Si-Based Resonant Cavity Enhanced Photodetectors

A novel bonding method using silicate gel as bonding medium is developed.High reflective SiO2/Si mirrors deposited on silicon substrates by e-beam deposition are bonded to the active layers at a low temperature of 350℃ without any special treatment on bonding surfaces.The reflectivities of the mirrors can be as high as 99.9%.A Si-based narrow band response InGaAs photodetector is successfully fabricated,with a quantum efficiency of 22.6% at the peak wavelength of 1.54μm,and a full width at half maximum of about 27nm.This method has a great potential for industry processes.

Photoelectric Conversion Efficiency Enhanced by Tilting Monocrystalline Silicon Photovoltaic Device

Based on the idea of tilting a photoelectric conversion device,the monocrystalline silicon p-n junction device was tilted to make light incident upon the device at an angle of 45° with the normal of the device surface,resulting in infrared multiple-internal-reflection inside the device.The internal reflection leads to path length increase of infrared light,making the enhancement of infrared absorption of the device.An increase of 11% in energy conversion efficiency has been obtained through tilting the device.

Fabrication of SiGe/Si Multi-Quantum Wells Resonant-Cavity-Enhanced Detector

A SiGe/Si multi-quantum wells resonant-cavity-enhanced(RCE) detector with high reflectivity bottom mirror is fabricated by a new method.The bottom mirror is deposited in the hole,which is etched from the backside of the sample by ethylenediamine-pyrocatechol-water(EPW) solution with the buried SiO2 layer in SOI substrate as the etching-stop layer.Reflectivity spectrum indicates that the mirror deposited in the hole has a reflectivity as high as 99% in the range of 1.2～1.5μm.The peak responsivity of the RCE detector at 1.344μm is 1.2mA/W and the full width at half maximum is 12nm.Compared with the conventional p-i-n photodetector,the responsivity of RCE detector is enhanced 8 times.

Long-wavelength SiGe/Si MQW resonant-cavity-enhanced photodetectors (RCE-PD) for application in optical fiber communication network

　

Polymorphous silicon nanowires synthesized by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition

Polymorphous Si nanowires (SiNWS) have been successfully synthesized on Si wafer by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) at 440degreesC,using silane as the Si source and Au as the catalyst. To grow the polymorphous SiNWS preannealing the Si substrate with Au film at 1100 degreesC is needed. The diameters of Si nanowires range from 15 to 100 urn. The structure morphology and chemical composition of the SiNWS have been characterized by high resolution x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, as well as energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy. A few interesting nanowires with Au nanoclusters uniformly distributed in the body of the wire were also produced by this technique.

1.3 mu m GaInNAs/GaAs multiple-quantum-wells resonant-cavity-enhanced photodetectors

A GaInNAs/GaAs multiple quantum well (MQW) resonant-cavity enhanced (RCE) photodetector operating at 1.3 mum with the full-width at half-maximum of 5.5 nm was demonstrated. The GaInNAs RCE photodetector was grown by molecular-beam epitaxy using an ion-removed dc-plasma cell as nitrogen source. GaInNAs/GaAs MQW shows a strong exciton peak at room temperature that is very beneficial for applications in long-wavelength absorption devices. For a 100-mum diameter RCE photodetector, the dark current is 20 and 32 pA at biases of 0 and 6 V, respectively, and the breakdown voltage is -18 V. The measured 3-dB bandwidth is 308 MHz. The reasons resulting in the poor high speed property were analyzed. The tunable wavelength of 18 nm with the angle of incident light was observed.

Investigation on integrated high speed DFB light source and narrow bandwidth RCE photodetector for WDM fiber communication network application

Electroabsorption (EA) modulator integrated with partially gain coupling distributed feedback (DFB) lasers have been fabricated and shown high single mode yield and wavelength stability. The small signal bandwidth is about 7.5 GHz. Strained Si1-chiGechi/Si multiple quantum well (MQW) resonant-cavity enhanced (RCE) photodetectors with SiO2/Si distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) as the mirrors have been fabricated and shown a clear narrow bandwidth response. The external quantum efficiency at 1.3 mum is measured to be about 3.5% under reverse bias of 16 V. A novel GaInNAs/GaAs MQW RCE p-i-n photodetector with high reflectance GaAs/ALAs DBR mirrors has also been demonstrated and shown the selectively detecting function with the FWHM of peak response of 12 nm.

Indium-doping enhanced two-dimensional-electron-gas performance in AlGaN/GaN heterostructures

Indium (In)-doping was applied in GaN layers during growth of AlGaN/GaN heterostructure with unintentionally doped or modulation Si-doped AlGaN layers. It was found that In-doping was effective in improving electron sheet density of two-dimensional-electron-gas (2DEG) in the heterostructures. Furthermore, In-doping also improved mobility in heterostructures with Si modulation-doped in AlGaN layers. The possible reasons were discussed. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and wet chemical etching revealed that crystalline quality of GaN was improved by In-doping. It was proposed that In-doping modified growth kinetics of GaN.

Fabrication of silicon-on-reflector for Si-based resonant-cavity-enhanced photodetectors

A novel silicon-on-reflector substrate for Si-based resonant-cavity-enhanced photodetectors has been fabricated by using Si-based sol-gel and smart-cut techniques. The Si/SiO2 Bragg reflector is controlled in situ by electron beam evaporation and the thickness can be adjusted to get high reflectivity. The reflectance spectra of the silicon-on-reflector substrate with five pairs of Si/SiO2 reflector have been measured and simulated by transfer matrix model. The reflectivity at operating wavelength is close to 100%. Based on the silicon-on-reflector substrate, SiGe/Si multiple quantum wells resonant-cavity-enhanced photodetectors for 1.3 mu m wavelength have been designed and simulated. Ten-fold enhancement of the quantum efficiency of resonant-cavity-enhanced photodetectors compared with conventional photodetectors is predicted.

The effect of low temperature GaAs nucleation on the growth of GaN on Silicon (001) during MOVPE process

High quality cubic GaN was grown on Silicon (001) by metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE) using a GaAs nucleation layer grown at low temperature. The influence of various nucleation conditions on the GaN epilayers' quality was investigated. We found that the GaAs nucleation layer grown by atomic layer epitaxy (ALE) could improve the quality of GaN films by depressing the formation of mixed phase. Photoluminescence (PL) and X-ray diffraction were used to characterize the properties of GaN epilayers. High quality GaN epilayers with PL full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 130meV at room temperature and X-ray FWHM of 70 arc-min were obtained by using 10-20nm GaAs nucleation layer grown by ALE.

Behavior of Pentacene Initial Nucleation on Various Dielectrics and Its Effect on Carrier Transport in Organic Field-Effect Transistor

The influence of dielectric surface energy on the initial nucleation and the growth of pentacene films as well as the electrical properties of the pentacene-based field-effect transistors are investigated. We have examined a range of organic and inorganic dielectrics with different surface energies, such as polycarbonate/SiO2, polystyrene/SiO2, and PMMA/SiO2 bi-layered dielectrics and also the bare SiO2 dielectric. Atomic force microscopy measurements of sub-monolayer and thick pentacene films indicated that the growth of pentacene film was in Stranski-Kranstanow growth mode on all the dielectrics. However, the initial nucleation density and the size of the first-layered pentacene islands deposited on different dielectrics are drastically influenced by the dielectric surface energy. With the increasing of the surface energy, the nucleation density increased and thus the average size of pentacene islands for the first mono-layer deposition decreased. The performance of fabricated pentacene-based thin film transistors was found to be highly related to nucleation density and the island size of deposited Pentacene film, and it had no relationship to the final particle size of the thick pentacene film. The field effect mobility of the thin film transistor could be achieved as high as 1.38 cm(2)/Vs with on/off ratio over 3 x 10(7) on the PS/SiO2 where the lowest surface energy existed among all the dielectrics. For comparison, the values of mobility and on/off ratio were 0.42 cm(2)/Vs and 1 x 10(6) for thin film transistor deposited directly on bare SiO2 having the highest surface energy.

Aluminum induced crystallization of strongly (111) oriented polycrystalline silicon thin film and nucleation analysis

A polycrystalline silicon thin film was fabricated on glass substrate by means of aluminum induced crystallization (AIC). Al and alpha-Si layers were deposited by magnetron sputtering respectively and annealed at 480A degrees C for 1 h to realize layer exchange. The polycrystalline silicon thin film was continuous and strongly (111) oriented. By analyzing the structure variation of the oxidation membrane and lattice mismatch between gamma-Al2O3 and Si, it was concluded that aluminum promoted the formation of (111) oriented silicon nucleus by controlling the orientation of gamma-Al2O3, which was formed at the early stage of annealing.

Enhanced Thermal Shock Resistance of Ceramics through Biomimetically Inspired Nanofins

We propose here a new method to make ceramics insensitive to thermal shock up to their melting temperature. In this method the surface of ceramics was biomimetically roughened into nanofinned surface that creates a thin air layer enveloping the surface of the ceramics during quenching. This air layer increases the heat transfer resistance of the surface of the ceramics by about 10 000 times so that the strong thermal gradient and stresses produced by the steep temperature difference in thermal shock did not occur both on the actual surface and in the interior of the ceramics. This method effectively extends the applications of existing ceramics in the extreme thermal environments.