More than two decades of measurements on GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures have shown that 2D electron systems are powerful platforms for exploring new physics.1,2 A further reduction in the dimensionality of the system to 1D can yield a simpler route to electron confinement, as well as access to materials with new electronic properties. For these reasons, we have constructed a home built metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) system for the synthesis of III-V semiconducting nanowires.
1. K. von Klitzing, G. Dorda, and M. Pepper, Phys. Rev. Lett. 45, 494 (1980).
2. D. C. Tsui, H. L. Stormer, and A. C. Gossard, Phys. Rev. Lett. 48, 1559 (1982).
3. R. S. Wagner and W.C. Ellis, Appl. Phys. Lett., 4, 89-90 (1964).
4. K. A. Dick et al., J. Cryst. Growth, 298, 631 (2007).
The goal of this project is to study electron and spin transport in semiconducting nanowires. Initial experiments are focused on InAs/InP due to the vast body of literature describing the growth of these compounds.3,4 However, our system can be adapted to grow different compounds by simply selecting alternative MOCVD precursors. Nanowire devices are fabricated by depositing the nanowires on an insulating substrate. Ohmic contacts and local depletion gates are fabricated using electron beam lithography. The use of a global back-gate, combined with the top-gates, allows the manipulation of electron density in the wires and enables analogs of many experiments traditionally performed in 2DEGs.
References1. K. von Klitzing, G. Dorda, and M. Pepper, Phys. Rev. Lett. 45, 494 (1980).
2. D. C. Tsui, H. L. Stormer, and A. C. Gossard, Phys. Rev. Lett. 48, 1559 (1982).
3. R. S. Wagner and W.C. Ellis, Appl. Phys. Lett., 4, 89-90 (1964).
4. K. A. Dick et al., J. Cryst. Growth, 298, 631 (2007).
InP nanowires epitaxially grown on a InAs <111>B wafer by Michael Schroer using the Petta lab MOCVD reactor. The wires are grown via the vapor-liquid-solid growth process.