Room Temperature Observation of Quantum Confinement in Single InAs Nanowires

Quantized conductance in nanowires can be observed at low temperature in transport measurements; however, the observation of sub-bands at room temperature is challenging due to temperature broadening. So far, conduction band splitting at room temperature has not been observed in III–V nanowires mainly due to the small energetic separations between the sub-bands. We report on the measurement of conduction sub-bands at room temperature, in single InAs nanowires, using Kelvin probe force microscopy. This method does not rely on charge transport but rather on measurement of the nanowire Fermi level position as carriers are injected into a single nanowire transistor. As there is no charge transport, electron scattering is no longer an issue, allowing the observation of the sub-bands at room temperature. We measure the energy of the sub-bands in nanowires with two different diameters, and obtain excellent agreement with theoretical calculations based on an empirical tight-binding model

Optical Emission in Hexagonal SiGe Nanowires

Recent advances in the synthetic growth of nanowires have given access to crystal phases that in bulk are only observed under extreme pressure conditions. Here, we use first-principles methods based on density functional theory and many-body perturbation theory to show that a suitable mixing of hexagonal Si and hexagonal Ge yields a direct bandgap with an optically permitted transition. Comparison of the calculated radiative lifetimes with typical values of nonradiative recombination mechanisms indicates that optical emission will be the dominant recombination mechanism. These findings pave the way to the development of silicon-based optoelectronic devices, thus far hindered by the poor light emission efficiency of cubic Si