Tokyo Tech News

Multi-stacking self-organized quantum dots of indium arsenide with a novel semiconductor of gallium nitride arsenide

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Published: March 31, 2009

The details of research

An advance by Miyamoto and his colleagues could prove useful in high-performance photonic devices, such as vertical cavity surface emitting lasers. Multi-stacking quantum dots improves optical gain by increasing dot density. Self-organizing is a key technology for forming the dots, but it relies on strain that results from the lattice mismatch of the dot material on the substrate. It is therefore subject to limits imposed by crystal defects and by the increased variation in dot size caused by accumulative strain. Miyamoto and his colleagues have addressed those limitations with gallium nitride arsenide (GaNAs) that has strain opposite that of indium arsenide deposited on a gallium-arsenide substrate.

The researchers inserted the GaNAs semiconductor as a spacer between the dot layers and investigated the resultant multi-stacked dot structures with photoluminescence and transmission electron microscopy. Their findings verified a reduction in luminescence line width, an increase in emission intensity, and an improvement in dot uniformity, even with an extremely small spacer thickness.

R. Suzuki, T. Miyamoto, T. Sengoku, and F. Koyamaouter
Applied Physics Letters 92, 141110 (2008).
Microsystem Research Center, Precision and Intelligence Laboratory

A transmission electron micrograph that reveals the improvement that gallium nitride arsenide occasions in the uniformity of multi-stacked indium-arsenide dots.

A transmission electron micrograph that reveals the improvement that gallium nitride arsenide occasions in the uniformity of multi-stacked indium-arsenide dots.

Reference
Fumio Koyama
Precision and Intelligence Laboratory
Professor

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