In this paper, we present a systematic study of coherent phonons in Si/SiGe superlattices with two different periods. The superlattice periodicity affects the acoustic properties of the structure. Transient thermoreflectance (TTR) technique is used to perform picosecond ultrasonics experiments and then, investigate coherent zone-folded acoustic phonons in different Si/SiGe superlattice structures. Several classes of coherent phonons are produced in the superlattice, whose generation mechanisms are different: Brillouin oscillations, coherent longitudinal-acoustic phonon Bragg reflection and impulsive stimulated Raman scattering (ISRS).

Thermal conductivity and electrical resistivity of 1 μm long aluminum nanowires, 75, 100, and 150nm in width and 100nm thick, were measured at room temperature. The method consists of microfabricated electrothermal test devices and a model-based data processing approach using finite-element analysis (FEA). The electrical and thermal properties of the nanowires differ significantly from bulk values while electrical resistivity agrees well with theoretical prediction. Electron transport equation models, which adequately describe the resistivity data, consistently underestimate the thermal conductivity. Incorporating a phonon contribution of ˜ 21 W/m·K to the total thermal conductivity is found to accurately describe the measured values.

As in our previous work [1] nanoporous silicon periodic supercells with 1000 atoms but now with 80 % porosity were constructed using the Tersoff potential and our novel approach [2]. The approach consists first in constructing a crystalline diamond-like supercell with a density (volume) close to the real value, and then lowering the density by increasing the volume, subjecting the resulting periodic supercell to Tersoff-based molecular dynamics processes at a temperature of 300 K, followed by geometry relaxation [1]. As in the ab initio approach [2] the resulting samples are also essentially amorphous and display pores along some of the crystallographic directions. We report the radial (pair) distribution function (RDF), g(r), the bond angle distribution, the pore structure where prominent and a computational prediction for the vibrational density of states for this structure. We then compare it to the 50 % porous sample presented in Ref [1]. The soft acoustic phonons are displaced towards lower energy in the 80 % porosity sample whereas the optical modes are displaced towards higher energies. The pseudo gap, existing in the 50 % porous sample, is depleted even more in the 80 % sample indicating a tendency towards the creation of a phonon gap for higher porosity materials. Some conjectures that point to the possible engineering of porous materials to produce predetermined phonon properties are discussed.

An enduring problem in the engineering of high-power semiconductor devices is how to mitigate the effect of heating. Heating means the proliferation of phonons, and phonons, interacting with electrons directly affect the electronic performance of the device. Nowhere is this more evident than the role of hot polar-optical phonons in reducing the drift velocity in the channel of an HFET and hence reducing its performance at high frequencies. The task of describing hot-phonon effects is complicated by the coupling to plasma modes. We present a theory of coupled plasmon-phonon modes in GaN, how they interact with electrons and how their lifetime becomes density-dependent. Raman scattering in bulk material shows a reduction of lifetime with increasing density and we offer an explanation for this in terms of the frequency dependence of the anharmonic decay mechanism. Hot-phonon effects, however, involve modes with wave-vectors beyond those probed by Raman scattering. By adopting a single-pole approximation for these modes we have obtained the lifetime dependence on wave vector, electron temperature and density.

Optically pumped terahertz silicon lasers utilize transitions between shallow donor states at low lattice temperatures. Population inversion in these lasers is built-up due to selective relaxation routes of optically excited electrons into impurity ground state. Each relaxation step of the electron occurs under assistance of intervalley and intravalley phonons with energies approaching the particular energy gaps between interacting excited donor states. These impurity phonon interactions determine, at the end, the lifetimes of the laser levels, and, therefore, efficiency of intracenter silicon lasers. Deformation of silicon crystal is a classical example of controllable influence on energy spectrum of shallow donor levels due to specific splitting and shifts of conduction band valleys. Using moderate (up to 400 MPa) external uniaxial deformation of a crystal, one can radically modify the impurity spectra while the phononic spectra remain almost unchanged. We have demonstrated significant improvement of efficiency for intracenter silicon lasers followed by changes of lifetime for the upper and the lower laser levels due to moving the impurity levels either into or out of resonance with corresponding intervalley phonon frequencies.

The phonon dynamics of both the A1(LO) and the E1 (LO) phonons in InN has been studied by time-resolved Raman spectroscopy on a subpicosecond time scale. From the temperature-dependence of their lifetimes, we demonstrate that both phonons decay primarily into a large wavevector TO phonon and a large wavevector TA/LA phonon consistent with the accepted phonon dispersion relationship for wurtzite InN. Their lifetimes have been found to decrease from 2.2 ps, at the low electron-hole pair density of5x1017cm-3 to 0.25 ps, at the highest density of2x1019cm-3. Our experimental findings demonstrate that carrier-density dependence of LO phonon lifetime is a universal phenomenon in polar semiconductors.