Temperature dependence of stacking faults in catalyst-free GaAs nanopillars.

Impressive opto-electronic devices and transistors have recently been fabricated from GaAs nanopillars grown by catalyst-free selective-area epitaxy, but this growth technique has always resulted in high densities of stacking faults. A stacking fault occurs when atoms on the growing (111) surface occupy the sites of a hexagonal-close-pack (hcp) lattice instead of the normal face-centered-cubic (fcc) lattice sites. When stacking faults occur consecutively, the crystal structure is locally wurtzite instead of zinc-blende, and the resulting band offsets are known to negatively impact device performance.

Extracting transport parameters in GaAs nanopillars grown by selective-area epitaxy.

We investigate the transport properties in p-type GaAs nanopillars (NPs) grown on GaAs(111) B substrates using selective-area epitaxy by studying single-NP field-effect transistors. Experimental results indicate that normalized resistance and field-effect mobility are highly sensitive to NP dimensions. Both in situ and ex situ chemical surface passivation techniques are found to significantly improve conductivity and mobility, especially for the smaller diameter NPs.

Bottom-up photonic crystal lasers.

The directed growth of III-V nanopillars is used to demonstrate bottom-up photonic crystal lasers. Simultaneous formation of both the photonic band gap and active gain region is achieved via catalyst-free selective-area metal-organic chemical vapor deposition on masked GaAs substrates. The nanopillars implement a GaAs/InGaAs/GaAs axial double heterostructure for accurate, arbitrary placement of gain within the cavity and lateral InGaP shells to reduce surface recombination.

Bottom-up photonic crystal cavities formed by patterned III-V nanopillars.

We report on the formation and optical properties of bottom-up photonic crystal (PC) cavities formed by III-V nanopillars (NPs) via catalyst-free selective-area metal-organic chemical vapor deposition on masked GaAs substrates. This method of NP synthesis allows for precise lithographic control of NP position and diameter enabling simultaneous formation of both the photonic band gap (PBG) region and active gain region. The PBG and cavity resonance are determined by independently tuning the NP radius r, pitch a, and height h in the respective masked areas.