The effects of thermal annealing on the minority-carrier diffusion lengths and depletion widths of GaInNAs are studied. We find that diffusion lengths in as-grown, Be- and Si-doped GaInNAs are limited to less than about 0.2 μm for samples with low concentrations of nitrogen. For higher concentrations of nitrogen, the diffusion lengths are not measurable. Annealing under a variety of temperatures and atmospheres typically makes the diffusion lengths even shorter. These short diffusion lengths are not yet long enough for GaInNAs to be useful in a next-generation, four-junction structure. Using undoped GaInNAs in a p–i–n structure is a promising approach to increase device performance. Currently, however, the depletion widths are too small at the bandgaps necessary for solar cells, and annealing does not appear to improve them.

We have demonstrated single dot spectroscopy of InAs/GaAs self-assembled quantum dots embedded in a bias controlled Schottky diode. The photoluminescence spectra exhibit discrete lines depending on bias, which we attribute to the recombination of positively charged, neutral, and negatively charged confined excitons. With excitation directly into the dot, large circular polarization memory is exhibited by the two charged exciton (trion) lines. This indicates long spin lifetimes for both the electron and the heavy hole in the quantum dots.

AlGaInP visible resonant cavity light emitting diodes (RCLEDs) were grown and fabricated on low-dislocation density, SiGe/Si metamorphic substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. A comparison with devices grown on GaAs and Ge substrates showed that not only did the RCLED device structure successfully transfer to the SiGe substrate, but also a higher optical output power was obtained. This is a result of a high thermal conductivity and an enhanced lateral current spreading. In addition, the growth of an AlGaAs current spreading layer and a modified top metal contact were incorporated to the SiGe RCLED to improve the device performance. With these improvements, a 410μm × 410μm device was fabricated with an optical power of 166μW at 665nm peak wavelength under 500mA current injection and an extremely narrow full width half maximum (FWHM) value of 3.63nm for electroluminescent emission under 50mA injection current.

β-phase iron disilicide (β-FeSi2) was obtained on n-type silicon (111) substrate by using excimer laser annealing (ELA). β-phase crystal which have good electrical properties was grown within a narrow annealing condition such as energy density. All samples were annealed by excimer laser show n-type characteristic. Graded junction was formed in FeSi2/Si hetero diode.

Progress in self-organized epitaxy of quantum dots lead to fabrication of edge- and surface-emitting lasers featuring excellent device characteristics. Exceedingly low lasing threshold, an internal quantum efficiency near unity, high characteristic temperature was proved, and high power operation was demonstrated. We present recent achievements on lasers and optical amplifiers based on InGaAs quantum dots in GaAs matrix.

First-principles calculations are presented for various native point defects in ZnGeP2 us-ing a full-potential linearized muffin-tin orbital method in the local density approximation to density functional theory. Under Zn-poor conditions, the lowest Gibbs energy defects are found to be the Gezn antisite and Vzn. The Vae is found to have high energy of formation under any chemical potential conditions and is unstable towards formation of a Vzn and ZnGe pair. It is shown that the V−Zn cannot account for the ALI EPR spectrum commonly associated with this vacancy and an alternative model consisting of a Vzn – GeZn – Vzn is tentatively proposed.

Recent efforts to improve the performance of mid-infrared antimonide-based semiconductor lasers have focused on enhancing the absorption of the pump beam to maximize power conversion efficiencies and minimize threshold intensities. One successful approach has been the optical pumping injection cavity (OPIC) laser, in which a type-II W active region is enclosed between distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) mirrors in order to achieve multiple passes of the pump beam and thereby to enhance absorption.

Previously, fixed wavelength sources have been used for optical pumping of OPIC laser structures, with limited tuning available by adjusting the incident angle. By tuning the pump wavelength using an optical parametric oscillator, we demonstrate minimum threshold intensities and maximum slope efficiencies at the resonance of the DBR cavity surrounding the active region, further demonstrating the potential of OPIC lasers. A 3.2 μm OPIC laser operated at 350 K in pulsed mode (at the highest operating temperature of the dewar), with a characteristic temperature of 50 K. The power conversion efficiency for a single facet at 300 K was the highest ever observed in the mid-IR, at approximately 4%.

Results are presented for two OPIC samples (emitting at ∼3.2 μm and 4.3 μm at high temperature), one of which was designed with a broadened cavity resonance, suitable for pumping with a multi-mode source. Threshold intensities and slope efficiencies measured as a function of pump wavelength demonstrate the strong resonance effect, and that the “broadened OPIC” does in fact manifest a much wider resonance than the non-broadened resonance cavity design.

This paper reports the characteristics of GaInP/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) with carbon-doped GaAs base layer grown by solid source molecular beam epitaxy (SSMBE) using carbon tetrabromide (CBr4) as p-type dopant precursor. Hydrofluoric acid (HF) was used to passivate the GaInP/GaAs HBTs. At base bias voltages below 0.8V in the Gummel plot, the base current of large-area devices after HF treatment was greatly reduced. This indicates that the extrinsic base surface recombination current was greatly reduced. After HF treatment, detailed DC characterization of the device performance from 300K to 380K was carried out and the carrier transport properties were investigated. The base current and collector current ideality factors at 300K were 1.12 and 1.01, respectively. This indicates that the space- charge region recombination current in the base is insignificant. From the temperature- dependent Gummel plot, the activation energies of collector current and base current were obtained. For the collector current, the activation energy is 1.4eV, which is close to the bandgap of the GaAs base. This indicates that the collector current is determined by the drift-diffusion process, in which an energy barrier of the same magnitude as the base bandgap is to be overcome by electrons before they reach the collector. For the base current, the activation energy is also 1.4eV, which is close to the bandgap of GaAs, indicating that band-to-band recombination plays a dominant role in the base current. No trap-related recombination was observed for the base and collector currents, which further indicates the high quality carbon-doped GaAs base material for the HBT structures.

Multi-fold stacks of In0.6Ga0.4As quantum dots embedded into a GaAs matrix were investigated by means of x-ray diffuse scattering. The measurements were done with synchrotron radiation using different diffraction geometries. Data evaluation was based on comparison with simulated distributions of x-ray diffuse scattering. For the samples under consideration ((001) surface) there is no difference in dot extension along [110] and [-110] and no directional ordering. The measurements easily allow the determination of the average indium amount in the wetting layers. Data evaluation by simulation of x-ray diffuse scattering gives an increase of Incontent from the dot bottom to the dot top.

Quasi-zero-dimensional (0D) semiconductors have been the subject of considerable interest which is stemmed from their unique physical properties which in turn are conducive to devices such as low threshold lasers and light polarization insensitive detectors, in addition to exciting basic physical phenomena. A laboratory analogue of 0D systems is semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) wherein the electronic states are spatially localized and the energy is fully quantized, loosely similar to an atomic system, making it more stable against thermal perturbations. In addition, the electronic density of states near the band gap is higher than in 3D and 2D systems, leading to a higher probability for optical transitions. Furthermore, the electron localization may dramatically reduce the scattering of electrons by bulk defects and reduce the rate of non-radiative recombination. Semiconductor based and metal based dots have been produced, the former via self-assembly and also by lithographic methods in many II-VI, III-V, and group IV semiconductor. The aim of this paper is focused on III-Nitride based quantum dots covering their production and optical properties, as well as reporting on the GaN quantum dots produced by molecular beam epitaxy utilizing standard, ripening, metal spray followed by nitridation methods.

Deep levels in multilayer structures of ten periods Si/Si0.8Ge0.2 (16/5 nm) grown by low-pressure chemical vapor deposition have been characterized by deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS). DLTS measurements reveal one dominant peak (E1) at around 130 K with a minor peak (E2) at around 240 K. The dominant trap E1 (Ec – 0.19 eV) is ascribed to the dislocation-related defect. The increase of the E1 concentration by a factor of 2 to 3 and the change of its energy level to Ec – 0.22 eV are observed with annealing up to 120°C. It is speculated that hydrogen incorporated during growth associates with E1 and the behavior of E1 upon annealing is caused by the release of hydrogen from E1.

GaPyAs1-y/GaAs, GaAsySb1-y/GaSb and GaSbyAs1-y/GaAs superlattices (SLs) grown by MBE, by exposure of GaAs to phosphorus and antimonide fluxes, and by exposure of GaSb to an arsenic flux, respectively, have been investigated. The focus is on the abruptness of interfaces and understanding the mechanisms associated with anion incorporation and exchange. In the case of the Sb flux interaction with the GaAs surface, the Sb segregation at the GaAs surface inhibits anion exchange. For the case of As over GaSb reactions, anion exchange results in the formation not only of the ternary alloy GaAsySb1-y, but also of isoelectronic compounds AsSbx that segregate at the GaSb/GaAs interface. In the case of the P flux interfaction with the GaAs surface, fast in-diffusion of P results in graded GaPyAs1-y layer formation.

This paper studies the decomposition characteristic of group-III sources during InAlAsSb growth on InP substrates by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) using trimethylindium (TMI), trimethylaluminum (TMA), trimethylantimony (TMSb) and arsine (AsH3). A composition analysis of InAlAsSb layers shows that the group-III compositions in the InAlAsSb layer change remarkably when the flow rate of the group-V source is varied. To clarify the reason for this phenomenon, the growth rates of InAsSb and AlAsSb component are examined. Their changes indicate that TMSb suppresses the decomposition of TMA while AsH3 enhances it. Moreover, the HEMT structure with InP/InAlAsSb Schottky barrier layer, whose InP layer acts as a recess-etch-stop layer, is fabricated for the first time. The I-V characteristics of a fabricated Schottky barrier diode indicate that the reverse leakage current of InP/InAlAsSb is about one order of magnitude smaller than that of commonly used InP/InAlAs.

1.5 micron range emission has been realized using the InAs quantum dots embedded into the metamorphic InGaAs layer containing 20% of InAs grown by MBE on a GaAs substrate. Growth regimes were optimized to reduce significantly the density of dislocations propagating into the active layer from the lattice mismatched interface. 2 mm long InGaAs/InGaAlAs lasers with 10 planes of quantum dots in the active region showed threshold current density about 1.4 kA/cm2 with the external differential efficiency as high as 38%. Lasing wavelength depends on the optical loss being in the 1.44–1.49 micron range at room temperature. On increasing the temperature the wavelength reaches 1.515 micron at 85C while the threshold current characteristic temperature of 55–60K was estimated. High internal quantum efficiency (η>60%) and low internal losses (α=3–4 cm-1 ) were realized. Maximum room temperature output power in pulsed regime as high as 5.5 W for 100 micron wide stripe was demonstrated. Using the same concept 1.3 micron InGaAs/InGaAlAs quantum well lasers were fabricated. The active region contained quantum wells with high (∼40%) indium content which was possible due to the intermediate InGaAs strain relaxation layer. 1 mm stripe lasers showed room temperature threshold current densities about 3.3 kA/cm2 (λ=1.29 micron) and 400 A/cm2 at 85K. Thus, the use of metamorphic InGaAs layers on GaAs substrate is a very promising approach for increasing the emission wavelength of GaAs based lasers.

We present results obtained using low temperature near-field scanning optical microscopy for the measurements of Zeeman splitting and the diamagnetic shift of single self-organized InAs/AlAs, InAs/GaAs and InP/GaInP quantum dots. The measurements allow us to relate the bimodal size distribution of InAs dots with variations in In content. For single InP QDs we observed a strong circular polarization at zero magnetic field accompanied with a negative energy shift, suggesting that strong internal magnetic fields exist in these QDs.