Julien Renard

Growth of GaN free-standing nanowires by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy: structural and optical characterization

This paper reports on the growth, structural and optical properties of GaN free-stranding nanowires synthesized in catalyst-free mode on Si(111) substrate by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy. Cylindrical nanowires with a hexagonal cross-section defined by planes and diameters down to 20xa0nm were observed. The nanowire length increases as a function of their diameter, following the Gibbs–Thomson expression. The growth rate in the lateral direction was studied using thin AlN marker layers showing that the lateral over axial growth rate ratio can be tuned from ~1% to ~10% by changing the III/V flux ratio, with the lateral growth remaining homogeneous along the NW axis. Nanowire ensembles showed a strong near band edge photoluminescence up to room temperature. Low-temperature micro-photoluminescence from a single wire is peaked at 3.478xa0eV with broadening of 6–10xa0meV. This emission is similar to the luminescence of nanowire ensembles, which demonstrates strain homogeneity from wire to wire. The optical properties along the wire axis probed by micro-cathodoluminescence were found to be uniform, with no evidence of a higher defect density in the bottom part of the nanowires next to the Si substrate.

Exciton and Biexciton Luminescence from Single GaN/AlN Quantum Dots in Nanowires

We present a microphotoluminescence study of single GaN/AlN quantum dots embedded in single nanowires. At low excitation power, single exciton lines with full width at half-maximum as narrow as 1 meV are observed. The study of the excitation power dependence of the emission allows us to identify the biexciton transitions with binding energies ranging from 20 to 40 meV.

Plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy growth of GaN nanowires using indium-enhanced diffusion

It is shown that catalyst-free growth of well-separated GaN nanowires by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy can be achieved at moderate temperature using an additional indium flux. The results are consistently interpreted by considering that thermally assisted or indium-assisted in-plane Ga adatom diffusion play an equivalent role, i.e., prevent growth of a two-dimensional GaN layer between nanowires, a necessary condition to their growth.

Defect-Mediated Spin Relaxation and Dephasing in Graphene

A principal motivation to develop graphene for future devices has been its promise for quantum spintronics. Hyperfine and spin-orbit interactions are expected to be negligible in single-layer graphene. Spin transport experiments, on the other hand, show that graphenes spin relaxation is orders of magnitude faster than predicted. We present a quantum interference measurement that disentangles sources of magnetic and nonmagnetic decoherence in graphene. Magnetic defects are shown to be the primary cause of spin relaxation, masking any potential effects of spin-orbit interaction.

Few-electron edge-state quantum dots in a silicon nanowire field-effect transistor.

We investigate the gate-induced onset of few-electron regime through the undoped channel of a silicon nanowire field-effect transistor. By combining low-temperature transport measurements and self-consistent calculations, we reveal the formation of one-dimensional conduction modes localized at the two upper edges of the channel. Charge traps in the gate dielectric cause electron localization along these edge modes, creating elongated quantum dots with characteristic lengths of ∼10 nm. We observe single-electron tunneling across two such dots in parallel, specifically one in each channel edge. We identify the filling of these quantum dots with the first few electrons, measuring addition energies of a few tens of millielectron volts and level spacings of the order of 1 meV, which we ascribe to the valley orbit splitting. The total removal of valley degeneracy leaves only a 2-fold spin degeneracy, making edge quantum dots potentially promising candidates for silicon spin qubits.

Spatial fluctuations of optical emission from single ZnO/MgZnO nanowire quantum wells

MgZnO/ZnO quantum wells on top of ZnO nanowires were grown by pulsed laser deposition. Ensembles of spatially fluctuating and narrow cathodoluminescence peaks with single widths down to 1xa0meV were found at the spectral position of the quantum well emission at 4xa0K. In addition, the number of these narrow QW peaks increases with increasing excitation power in micro-photoluminescence, thus pointing to quantum-dot-like emission centers. Indeed, laterally strained areas of about 5xa0nm diameter were identified at the quantum well positions on top of the nanowires by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy.

Suppression of nonradiative processes in long-lived polar GaN/AlN quantum dots

We present a temperature-dependent time-resolved photoluminescence study of the nonradiative processes in polar GaN/AlN quantum dots and quantum wells. The photoluminescence decay times of quantum wells drop above 50 K due to the presence of nonradiative recombination centers. In contrast, the three-dimensional carrier confinement in quantum dots efficiently suppresses nonradiative processes up to room temperature, even for radiative decay times reaching the microsecond range.

Interband and intersubband optical characterization of semipolar (112¯2)-oriented GaN/AlN multiple-quantum-well structures

We report on semipolar GaN/AlN multiple-quantum-well structures grown on m-plane sapphire by plasma-assisted molecular-beam epitaxy. Optical investigation confirms a significant reduction in the quantum-confined Stark effect, in agreement with theoretical calculations, which predict an internal electric field between 0.6 and −0.55 MV/cm in the quantum wells, depending on the strain state. With respect to polar materials, the reduction in the internal electric field results in a substantial redshift of the intersubband energy.

Fine optical spectroscopy of the 3.45 eV emission line in GaN nanowires

GaN nanowires grown by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy are of excellent optical quality, their optical signature being characteristic of homogeneous strain-free GaN. There are however discrepancies between the low temperature luminescence spectra of GaN thin films and nanowires, in particular, a strong emission line around 3.45u2009eV in nanowires is not found with such a large intensity in thin film GaN. The origin of this emission line in nanowires is still debated; in this article, we shed new light on this debate notably by polarization-resolved luminescence and magneto-luminescence experiments. Our findings demonstrate, in particular, that this line cannot be attributed to a two-electron satellite of the donor bound exciton transition.

Electrical Control of g-Factor in a Few-Hole Silicon Nanowire MOSFET

Hole spins in silicon represent a promising yet barely explored direction for solid-state quantum computation, possibly combining long spin coherence, resulting from a reduced hyperfine interaction, and fast electrically driven qubit manipulation. Here we show that a silicon-nanowire field-effect transistor based on state-of-the-art silicon-on-insulator technology can be operated as a few-hole quantum dot. A detailed magnetotransport study of the first accessible hole reveals a g-factor with unexpectedly strong anisotropy and gate dependence. We infer that these two characteristics could enable an electrically driven g-tensor-modulation spin resonance with Rabi frequencies exceeding several hundred mega-Hertz.