Droplet epitaxy is a very powerful technology for the fabrication of semiconductor quantum optoelectronic devices due to its offering all-preparation of quantum dots, nanowires and nanorings. As is known, the size control of the droplets is a key issue for the droplet epitaxy. Usually, the droplet size is adjusted by the growth temperature and growth rate based on the well-known MBE method, but it is still quite limited. In this work, we attempted to use an in situ laser irradiation to modify the Ga droplet size during the MBE growth. Two groups of samples were prepared: for all the samples, after the growth of a 300nm GaAs buffer layer on GaAs substrate, the total following deposition amount of Ga is 8ML with a single in-situ shot of laser irradiation. In contrast, for group A, the exposure was performed when the 8ML Ga deposition was completely finished, while for group B, the exposure was inserted in the middle of the deposition, i.e., when it reached 4ML. We carefully compared the effect of the insertion position of the exposure on the obtained droplet morphology with different pulse energies. The results show the droplet size can be strongly adjusted via the in-situ laser irradiation especially when it is inserted in the middle of the droplet growth. Finally, droplets have specific heights and widths with an extremely wide distribution ranging from 0.7nm to 97.3nm and 21.6nm to 396.5nm, respectively, are successfully realized.
In this work, after depositing a GaAs buffer layer (approx. 200nm) via molecular beam epitaxy, we subjected the GaAs substrate to in-situ irradiation by 15 laser pulses (pulse duration ~10ns) with varying single-pulsed energies of 10mJ, 15mJ, 20mJ, and 30mJ, corresponding to samples A-D. For sample A, quantum rings with a density of 3.75×108/cm2 are observed, of which the average height and width are 1.4nm and 22.2nm, respectively. For sample B, the density, average height and width are 5×108/cm2, 2.5nm and 69.1nm. With an increase in laser energy, the density and size of sample C and D have increased to 7×108/cm2-3.6nm (height)-78.5nm (width) and 1×109/cm2-5.2nm (height)-86.1nm (width) respectively. Obviously, this novel technology that the GaAs quantum rings can be fabricated in-situ through multi-pulsed laser irradiation whilst the size and density of the quantum rings can be effectively adjusted by varying the laser energy would have significant applications in all types of semiconductor devices based on quantum rings in the future.
In this study, following the deposition of a 500nm GaAs buffer layer, the GaAs substrate was irradiated in MBE with an in situ laser shooting at a very low temperature of around 12°C. We carefully observed the morphology evolution of the irradiated surface with different pulse energy varying from 20mJ to 50mJ. After being pulsed-irradiated with 20mJ, a density of Ga droplets as high as 7.2×1010/cm2 was directly formed on the surface. The droplets have a height range of 1.0nm to 4.1nm (averaging at 2.4nm) and a width range of 15.7nm to 39.2nm (averaging at 28.1nm). With increasing irradiation energy, it is observed the droplet density will gradually decrease from 2.2 × 1010/cm2, 1.2 × 1010/cm2 to 5.2 × 109/cm2 while the size (average width/height) will continue to grow up from 64.1nm/8.2nm, 63.3/9.2nm to 76.1nm/12.2nm, respectively corresponding to exposure energy from 30mJ, 40mJ to 50mJ. The results demonstrate the successful provision of a new technology to generate Ga droplets on the surface of GaAs directly through in-situ pulsed laser irradiation without the need of epitaxial growth. Furthermore, both the resulting density and size can be easily and effectively adjusted by varying the laser energy. Additionally, this technique offers significant advantages such as low cost, free of contamination and defects and high controllability. Therefore, we believe this technology may find great application prospects for nano-fabrication of semiconductor quantum structures and devices.
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