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Register a new userWettability and petal effect of GaAs native oxides
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Agnieszka Gocalinska Dr
Publication date
2011
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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We discuss unreported transitions of oxidized GaAs surfaces between (super)hydrophilic and hydrophobic states when stored in ambient conditions. Contact angles higher than 90deg and high adhesive force were observed for several air-aged epitaxial samples grown under different conditions as well as on epi-ready wafers. Regardless of the morphologies of the surface, superhydrophilicity of oxygen-plasma treated samples was observed, an effect disappearing with storage time. Reproducible hydrophobicity was likewise observed, as expected, after standard HCl surface etching. The relation between surface oxides and hydrophobic/hydrophilic behavior is discussed.
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When pristine material surfaces are exposed to air, highly reactive broken bonds can promote the formation of surface oxides with structures and properties differing greatly from bulk. Determination of the oxide structure, however, is often elusive through the use of indirect diffraction methods or techniques that probe only the outer most layer. As a result, surface oxides forming on widely used materials, such as group III-nitrides, have not been unambiguously resolved, even though critical properties can depend sensitively on their presence. In this work, aberration corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy reveals directly, and with depth dependence, the structure of native two--dimensional oxides that form on AlN and GaN surfaces. Through atomic resolution imaging and spectroscopy, we show that the oxide layers are comprised of tetrahedra--octahedra cation--oxygen units, similar to bulk $theta$--Al$_2$O$_3$ and $beta$--Ga$_2$O$_3$. By applying density functional theory, we show that the observed structures are more stable than previously proposed surface oxide models. We place the impact of these observations in the context of key III-nitride growth, device issues, and the recent discovery of two-dimnesional nitrides.
We report results of investigations of structural and transport properties of GaAs/Ga(1-x)In(x)As/GaAs quantum wells (QWs) having a 0.5-1.8 ML thick Mn layer, separated from the QW by a 3 nm thick spacer. The structure has hole mobility of about 2000 cm2/(V*s) being by several orders of magnitude higher than in known ferromagnetic two-dimensional structures. The analysis of the electro-physical properties of these systems is based on detailed study of their structure by means of high-resolution X-ray diffractometry and glancing-incidence reflection, which allow us to restore the depth profiles of structural characteristics of the QWs and thin Mn containing layers. These investigations show absence of Mn atoms inside the QWs. The quality of the structures was also characterized by photoluminescence spectra from the QWs. Transport properties reveal features inherent to ferromagnetic systems: a specific maximum in the temperature dependence of the resistance and the anomalous Hall effect (AHE) observed in samples with both metallic and activated types of conductivity up to ~100 K. AHE is most pronounced in the temperature range where the resistance maximum is observed, and decreases with decreasing temperature. The results are discussed in terms of interaction of 2D-holes and magnetic Mn ions in presence of large-scale potential fluctuations related to random distribution of Mn atoms. The AHE values are compared with calculations taking into account its intrinsic mechanism in ferromagnetic systems.
The possibility that metals may support ferroelectricity is an open issue. Anderson and Blount showed that certain martensitic transitions involve inversion symmetry breaking and the formal existence of a polar axis, so metallic ferroelectric behavior has been claimed for metals undergoing a centrosymmetric (CS) to non-CS structural transformation (Cd2ReO7, LiOsO3) or natively non-CS (SrCaRu2O), or for ferroelectric insulators whose polar distortion survives moderate metallicity induced by doping or proximity. However, none of these systems, nor any other to our knowledge, embodies a truly ferroelectric metal with native switchable polarization and native metallicity coexisting in a single phase. Here we report the first-ever theoretical prediction of such a material. By first-principles calculations, we show that the layered perovskite Bi5Ti5O17 has a non-zero density of states at the Fermi level and metal-like conductivity, as well as a spontaneous polarization in zero field. Further, we predict that the polarization of Bi5Ti5O17 is switchable both in principle, as the material complies with the sufficient symmetry requirements, and in practice, as Bi5Ti5O17 can sustain a sizable potential drop along the polar direction, as needed to revert its polarization by application of an electric bias.
Carrier and spin recombination are investigated in p-type GaAs of acceptor concentration NA = 1.5 x 10^(17) cm^(-3) using time-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy at 15 K. At low pho- tocarrier concentration, acceptors are mostly neutral and photoelectrons can either recombine with holes bound to acceptors (e-A0 line) or form excitons which are mostly trapped on neutral acceptors forming the (A0X) complex. It is found that the spin lifetime is shorter for electrons that recombine through the e-A0 transition due to spin relaxation generated by the exchange scattering of free electrons with either trapped or free holes, whereas spin flip processes are less likely to occur once the electron forms with a free hole an exciton bound to a neutral acceptor. An increase of exci- tation power induces a cross-over to a regime where the bimolecular band-to-band (b-b) emission becomes more favorable due to screening of the electron-hole Coulomb interaction and ionization of excitonic complexes and free excitons. Then, the formation of excitons is no longer possible, the carrier recombination lifetime increases and the spin lifetime is found to decrease dramatically with concentration due to fast spin relaxation with free photoholes. In this high density regime, both the electrons that recombine through the e-A0 transition and through the b-b transition have the same spin relaxation time.
Quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) insulator is a topological phase which exhibits chiral edge states in the absence of magnetic field. The celebrated Haldane model is the first example of QAH effect, but difficult to realize. Here, we predict the two-dimensional single-atomic-layer V2O3 with a honeycomb-Kagome structure is a QAH insulator with a large band gap (large than 0.1 eV) and a high ferromagnetic Curie temperature (about 900 K). Combining the first-principle calculations with the effective Hamiltonian analysis, we find that the spin-majority dxy and dyz orbitals of V atoms on the honeycomb lattice form a massless Dirac cone near the Fermi level which becomes massive when the on-site spin-orbit coupling is included. Interestingly, we find that the large band gap is caused by a cooperative effect of electron correlation and spin-orbit coupling. Both first-principle calculations and the effective Hamiltonian analysis confirm that 2D V2O3 has a non-zero Chern number (i.e., one). Our work paves a new direction towards realizing the QAH effect at room temperature.
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