Why does wurtzite form in nanowires of III-V zinc-blende semiconductors?

We develop a nucleation-based model to explain the formation of the wurtzite (WZ) crystalline phase during the vapor-liquid-solid growth of free-standing nanowires of zinc-blende (ZB) semiconductors. We first show that, in nanowires, nucleation generally occurs at the outer edge of the solid/liquid interface (the triple phase line) rather than elsewhere at the solid/liquid interface. In the present case, this entails major differences between ZB and WZ nuclei. Depending on the pertinent interface energies, WZ nucleation is favored at high liquid supersaturation. This explains our systematic observation of ZB during the early stages of nanowire growth.Comment: 4 pages with 4 figures Submitted to Physical Review Letter

Structure and magnetism of orthorhombic epitaxial FeMnAs

The molecular beam epitaxy growth of Fe on MnAs/GaAs(001) leads to the formation of an epitaxial FeMnAs phase at the Fe/MnAs interface. The investigation of the structure by high angle annular dark field imaging in a scanning transmission electron microscope reveals an unusual orthorhombic structure, with vacancy ordering. Ab initio calculations show an antiferromagnetic ground state for this orthorhombic FeMnAs.Fil: Demaille, Dominique. Laboratorio Internacional Franco-Argentino en Nanociencias; Francia. Universite Pierre et Marie Curie. Institut des Nanosciences de Paris; FranciaFil: Patriarche, Gilles. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; FranciaFil: Helman, Christian. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica; Argentina. Laboratorio Internacional Franco-Argentino en Nanociencias; FranciaFil: Eddrief, Mahmoud. Laboratorio Internacional Franco-Argentino en Nanociencias; Francia. Universite Pierre et Marie Curie. Institut des Nanosciences de Paris; FranciaFil: Etgens, Hugo. Laboratorio Internacional Franco-Argentino en Nanociencias; Francia. Universite Pierre et Marie Curie. Institut des Nanosciences de Paris; FranciaFil: Sacchi, Maurizio. Laboratorio Internacional Franco-Argentino en Nanociencias; Francia. Universite Pierre et Marie Curie. Institut des Nanosciences de Paris; Francia. L’Orme des merisiers Saint-Aubin. Synchrotron SOLEIL; FranciaFil: Llois, Ana Maria. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica; Argentina. Laboratorio Internacional Franco-Argentino en Nanociencias; Francia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Marangolo, Massimiliano. Laboratorio Internacional Franco-Argentino en Nanociencias; Francia. Universite Pierre et Marie Curie. Institut des Nanosciences de Paris; Franci

High density InAlAs/GaAlAs quantum dots for non-linear optics in microcavities

Structural and optical properties of InAlAs/GaAlAs quantum dots grown by molecular beam epitaxy are studied using transmission electron microscopy, temperature- and time resolvedphotoluminescence. The control of the recombination lifetime (50 ps – 1.25 ns), and of the dot density (5.10−8 – 2.1011 cm−3) strongly suggest that these material systems can find wide applications in opto-electronic devices as focusing non linear dispersive materials as well as fast saturable absorbers

Buried dislocation networks designed to organize the growth of III-V semiconductor nanostructures

We first report a detailed transmission electron microscopy study of dislocation networks (DNs) formed at shallowly buried interfaces obtained by bonding two GaAs crystals between which we establish in a controlled manner a twist and a tilt around a k110l direction. For large enough twists, the DN consists of a twodimensional network of screw dislocations accommodating mainly the twist and of a one-dimensional network of mixed dislocations accommodating mainly the tilt. We show that in addition the mixed dislocations accommodate part of the twist and we observe and explain slight unexpected disorientations of the screw dislocations with respect to the k110l directions. By performing a quantitative analysis of the whole DN, we propose a coherent interpretation of these observations which also provides data inaccessible by direct experiments. When the twist is small enough, one screw subnetwork vanishes. The surface strain field induced by such DNs has been used to pilot the lateral ordering of GaAs and InGaAs nanostructures during metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy. We prove that the dimensions and orientations of the nanostructures are correlated with those of the cells of the underlying DN and explain how the interface dislocation structure governs the formation of the nanostructures

Polarization dependence of electroluminescence from closely-stacked and columnar quantum dots

Quantum dots (QDs) have a potential for application in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs), due to their high saturation power related to the low differential gain, fast gain recovery and wide gain spectrum compared to quantum wells. Besides all advantages, QDs realized by Stranski-Krastanov growth mode have a flat shape which leads to a gain anisotropy and a related transverse magnetic (TM) and -electric (TE) polarization dependence as compared to bulk material. This has so far prevented their applications in SOAs. It has been suggested that control of optical polarization anisotropy of the QD can be obtained through QD shape engineering, in closely stacked or columnar QDs (CQDs). To this aim, we have fabricated and tested SOA structures based on closely-stacked and columnar QDs. Closely-stacked InAs QDs with 4, 6 and 10nm GaAs spacer showed a minor improvement in the ratio of TM and TE integrated electroluminescence (EL) over standard QDs along with a strong reduction in efficiency. In contrast, a large improvement was obtained in CQDs, depending on the number of stacked submonolayers which can be attributed to the more symmetric shape of columnar QDs. A relatively small spectral separation (ΔE ~ 21meV) between TE- and TM-EL peaks has been observed showing that heavy- and light hole-like states, respectively are energetically close in these QDs. These results indicate that columnar QDs have a significant potential for polarization-independent QD SO

Diffusion as the main process for mass transport in very low water content argillites: 1. Chloride as a natural tracer for mass transport—Diffusion coefficient and concentration measurements in interstitial water

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/95672/1/wrcr9815.pd