Stemless InSb nanowire networks and nanoflakes grown on InP.

Among the experimental realization of fault-tolerant topological circuits are interconnecting nanowires with minimal disorder. Out-of-plane InSb nanowire networks formed by merging are potential candidates. Yet, their growth requires a foreign material stem usually made of InP-InAs. This stem imposes limitations, which include restricting the size of the nanowire network, inducing disorder through grain boundaries and impurity incorporation. Here, we omit the stem allowing for the growth of stemless InSb nanowire networks on an InP substrate. To enable the growth without the stem, we show that a preconditioning step using arsine (AsH3) is required before InSb growth. High-yield of stemless nanowire growth is achieved by patterning the substrate with a selective-area mask with nanohole cavities, containing restricted gold droplets from which nanowires originate. Interestingly, these nanowires are bent, posing challenges for the synthesis of interconnecting nanowire networks due to merging failure. We attribute this bending to the non-homogeneous incorporation of arsenic impurities in the InSb nanowires and the interposed lattice-mismatch. By tuning the growth parameters, we can mitigate the bending, yielding large and single crystalline InSb nanowire networks and nanoflakes. The improved size and crystal quality of these nanostructures broaden the potential of this technique for fabricating advanced quantum devices.

Direct bandgap quantum wells in hexagonal Silicon Germanium.

Silicon is indisputably the most advanced material for scalable electronics, but it is a poor choice as a light source for photonic applications, due to its indirect band gap. The recently developed hexagonal Si1-xGex semiconductor features a direct bandgap at least for x > 0.65, and the realization of quantum heterostructures would unlock new opportunities for advanced optoelectronic devices based on the SiGe system. Here, we demonstrate the synthesis and characterization of direct bandgap quantum wells realized in the hexagonal Si1-xGex system. Photoluminescence experiments on hex-Ge/Si0.2Ge0.8 quantum wells demonstrate quantum confinement in the hex-Ge segment with type-I band alignment, showing light emission up to room temperature. Moreover, the tuning range of the quantum well emission energy can be extended using hexagonal Si1-xGex/Si1-yGey quantum wells with additional Si in the well. These experimental findings are supported with ab initio bandstructure calculations. A direct bandgap with type-I band alignment is pivotal for the development of novel low-dimensional light emitting devices based on hexagonal Si1-xGex alloys, which have been out of reach for this material system until now.

Low Surface Recombination in Hexagonal SiGe Alloy Nanowires: Implications for SiGe-Based Nanolasers.

Monolithic integration of silicon-based electronics and photonics could open the door toward many opportunities including on-chip optical data communication and large-scale application of light-based sensing devices in healthcare and automotive; by some, it is considered the Holy Grail of silicon photonics. The monolithic integration is, however, severely hampered by the inability of Si to efficiently emit light. Recently, important progress has been made by the demonstration of efficient light emission from direct-bandgap hexagonal SiGe (hex-SiGe) alloy nanowires. For this promising material, realized by employing a nanowire structure, many challenges and open questions remain before a large-scale application can be realized. Considering that for other direct-bandgap materials like GaAs, surface recombination can be a true bottleneck, one of the open questions is the importance of surface recombination for the photoluminescence efficiency of this new material. In this work, temperature-dependent photoluminescence measurements were performed on both hex-Ge and hex-SiGe nanowires with and without surface passivation schemes that have been well documented and proven effective on cubic silicon and germanium to elucidate whether and to what extent the internal quantum efficiency (IQE) of the wires can be improved. Additionally, time-resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) measurements were performed on unpassivated hex-SiGe nanowires as a function of their diameter. The dependence of the surface recombination on the SiGe composition could, however, not be yet addressed given the sample-to-sample variations of the state-of-the-art hex-SiGe nanowires. With the aforementioned experiments, we demonstrate that at room temperature, under high excitation conditions (a few kW cm-2), the hex-(Si)Ge surface is most likely not a bottleneck for efficient radiative emission under relatively high excitation conditions. This is an important asset for future hex(Si)Ge optoelectronic devices, specifically for nanolasers.