Andreas Laufer

Optical properties of Si- and Mg-doped gallium nitride nanowires grown by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy

The optical properties of GaN nanowires grown by catalyst free plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy on Si (111) are investigated by photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. The influence of the Si- and Mg-flux as well as the III-V ratio during growth on the PL properties is discussed. The Mg concentration as determined by secondary ion mass spectroscopy ranges from 5×1018 to 1×1020 cm−3. Raman scattering reveals that the nanowires are strain-free, irrespective of Si- or Mg-doping. The near band-edge emission of undoped or slightly Si-doped material is dominated by the narrow D0X recombination at 3.4715 eV with a full width at half maximum of 1.5 meV at 4 K. For high Si-fluxes, a blueshift of the D0X peak by 1 meV is found, which is attributed to band-filling effects. For moderate Mg-fluxes the acceptor-bound exciton recombination was detected at 3.4665 eV. Point defects due to the N-rich growth conditions are discussed as the origin of the emission band at 3.45 eV. Recombination at coalescence boundaries we...

Optical properties and structural characteristics of ZnMgO grown by plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy

Wurtzite Zn1−xMgxO thin films with Mg contents between x=0 and x=0.37 were grown on c-plane sapphire substrates by plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy using a MgO/ZnMgO buffer layer. The a-lattice parameter is independent from the Mg concentration, whereas the c-lattice parameter decreases from 5.20 A for x=0 to 5.17 A for x=0.37, indicating pseudomorphic growth. The near band edge photoluminescence shows a blueshift with increasing Mg concentration to an emission energy of 4.11 eV for x=0.37. Simultaneously, the energetic position of the deep defect luminescence shows a linear shift from 2.2 to 2.8 eV. Low temperature transmission measurements reveal strong excitonic features for the investigated composition range and alloy broadening effects for higher Mg contents. The Stokes shift as well as the Urbach energy is increased to values of up to 125 and 54 meV for x=0.37, respectively, indicating exciton localization due to alloy fluctuations.

Triple-twin domains in Mg doped GaN wurtzite nanowires: structural and electronic properties of this zinc-blende-like stacking

We report on the effect of Mg doping on the properties of GaN nanowires grown by plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy. The most significant feature is the presence of triple-twin domains, the density of which increases with increasing Mg concentration. The resulting high concentration of misplaced atoms gives rise to local changes in the crystal structure equivalent to the insertion of three non-relaxed zinc-blende (ZB) atomic cells, which result in quantum wells along the wurtzite (WZ) nanowire growth axis. High resolution electron energy loss spectra were obtained exactly on the twinned (zinc-blende) and wurtzite planes. These atomically resolved measurements, which allow us to identify modifications in the local density of states, revealed changes in the band to band electronic transition energy from 3.4 eV for wurtzite to 3.2 eV in the twinned lattice regions. These results are in good agreement with specific ab initio atomistic simulations and demonstrate that the redshift observed in previous photoluminescence analyses is directly related to the presence of these zinc-blende domains, opening up new possibilities for band-structure engineering.

Determination of secondary ion mass spectrometry relative sensitivity factors for polar and non-polar ZnO

Zinc oxide (ZnO) is regarded as a promising material for optoelectronic devices, due to its electronic properties. Solely, the difficulty in obtaining p-type ZnO impedes further progress. In this connection, the identification and quantification of impurities is a major demand. For quantitative information using secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), so-called relative sensitivity factors (RSF) are mandatory. Such conversion factors did not yet exist for ZnO. In this work, we present the determined RSF values for ZnO using primary (ion implanted) as well as secondary (bulk doped) standards. These RSFs have been applied to commercially available ZnO substrates of different surface termination (a-plane, Zn-face, and O-face) to quantify the contained impurities. Although these ZnO substrates originate from the same single-crystal, we observe discrepancies in the impurity concentrations. These results cannot be attributed to surface termination dependent RSF values for ZnO.

Ag related defect state in ZnO thin films

The authors present thermal admittance spectroscopy (TAS) of silver oxide barrier contacts on heteroepitaxial ZnO thin films grown by pulsed‐laser deposition on sapphire. As the temperature increases from 120 K to 215 K an unusual decrease of the capacitance of the diode structure is observed. Depth resolved measurements show that this effect decreases with increasing distance of the probing volume from the silver oxide contact. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy reveals that silver diffuses from the contact in to the thin film; the Ag depth profile corresponds well to the results of the depth resolved TAS measurement.

Growth of Cubic Zinc Sulfide on (001) GaP Substrates

We report on the successful growth of ZnS epilayers on GaP (001) substrates using a CVD setup. The crystal structure of our layers is cubic zinc blende. The structural aspects and surface morphologies of ZnS films with different thicknesses and growth temperatures have been investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Furthermore, low temperature photoluminescence (PL) at 4 K was used to determine optical properties. The appearance of two acceptor related transistions was found to correlate with our analysis of impurity incorporation by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). The high structural quality and low impurity levels are promising for the further development of the material system, aiming at an application as transparent conductive material.