No Arabic abstract
We study strain relaxation and surface damage of GaN nanopillar arrays fabricated using inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etching and post etch wet chemical treatment. We controlled the shape and surface damage of such nanopillar structures through selection of etching parameters. We compared different substrate temperatures and different chlorine-based etch chemistries to fabricate high quality GaN nanopillars. Room temperature photoluminescence and Raman scattering measurements were carried to study the presence of surface defect and strain relaxation on these nanostructures, respectively. We found that wet KOH etching can remove the side wall damages caused by dry plasma etching, leading to better quality of GaN nanopillars arrays. The Si material underneath the GaN pillars was removed by KOH wet etching, leaving behind a fine Si pillar to support the GaN structure. Substantial strain relaxations were observed in these structures from room temperature Raman spectroscopy measurements. Room temperature Photoluminescence spectroscopy shows the presence of whispering gallery modes from these the nano disks structures.
We use first-principles methods to investigate the adsorption of Cu, Pb, Ag, and Mg onto a H-terminated Si surface. We show that Cu and Pb can adsorb strongly while Ag and Mg are fairly inert. In addition, two types of adsorption states are seen to exist for Pb. We also study the clustering energetics of Cu and Pb on the surface and find that while Cu clusters eagerly, Pb may prefer to form only small clusters of a few atoms. This kind of behavior of impurities is incorporated in kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of wet etching of Si. The simulation results agree with experiments supporting the idea that micromasking by Cu clusters and Pb atoms is the mechanism through which these impurities affect the etching process.
We investigate the effect of strain on the etching rate of two SiGe wet etchants, namely NH4OH:H2O2 and H2O2. For both etchants, we found that there is no appreciable strain selectivity, i.e. the etching rates do not depend on the actual strain state in the SiGe films. Instead, for the NH4OH:H2O2 solution, the rates are primarily determined by the Ge content. Finally, we show that both etchants are isotropic with no preferential etching of particular facets.
A chemical etching method was developed for (110) and (001) NdGaO3 single crystal substrates in order to obtain an atomically flat GaO2-x - terminated surface. Depending on the surface step density the substrates were etched in pH-controlled NH4F- or NH4Cl-based solutions, followed by an annealing step at temperatures of 800-1000oC, in air or in oxygen flow, in order to recrystallize the surface. Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and high-pressure Reflection High Energy Electron Diffraction (RHEED) were used to analyse the surface morphology of the samples after every treatment. Studies on the chemistry and characteristics of the terminating layer showed that the chemically etched NdGaO3 substrate surface has a GaO2-x termination and that the (110) and (001) NdGaO3 surfaces are characterized by a different free surface energy, which is lower for latter.
We report high room-temperature mobility in single layer graphene grown by Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) after wet transfer on SiO$_2$ and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) encapsulation. By removing contaminations trapped at the interfaces between single-crystal graphene and hBN, we achieve mobilities up to$sim70000cm^2 V^{-1} s^{-1}$ at room temperature and$sim120000cm^2 V^{-1} s^{-1}$ at 9K. These are over twice those of previous wet transferred graphene and comparable to samples prepared by dry transfer. We also investigate the combined approach of thermal annealing and encapsulation in polycrystalline graphene, achieving room temperature mobilities$sim30000 cm^2 V^{-1} s^{-1}$. These results show that, with appropriate encapsulation and cleaning, room temperature mobilities well above $10000cm^2 V^{-1} s^{-1}$ can be obtained in samples grown by CVD and transferred using a conventional, easily scalable PMMA-based wet approach.
High-quality rare-earth-ion (REI) doped materials are a prerequisite for many applications such as quantum memories, ultra-high-resolution optical spectrum analyzers and information processing. Compared to bulk materials, REI doped powders offer low-cost fabrication and a greater range of accessible material systems. Here we show that crystal properties, such as nuclear spin lifetime, are strongly affected by mechanical treatment, and that spectral hole burning can serve as a sensitive method to characterize the quality of REI doped powders. We focus on the specific case of thulium doped Y$_2$Al$_5$O$_{12}$ (Tm:YAG). Different methods for obtaining the powders are compared and the influence of annealing on the spectroscopic quality of powders is investigated on a few examples. We conclude that annealing can reverse some detrimental effects of powder fabrication and, in certain cases, the properties of the bulk material can be reached. Our results may be applicable to other impurities and other crystals, including color centers in nano-structured diamond.