High efficiency broadband semiconductor nanowire devices

摘要

Amongst the candidates for very high efficiency electronics, solid state light sources, photovoltaics, and photoelectrochemical devices, and photobiological devices are those based upon metal-nitride nanowires. Enhanced nanowire performance typically require heterostructures, quantum dots, etc which requirement that these structures are grown with relatively few defects and in a controllable reproducible manner. Additionally flexibility according to the device design requires that the nanowire at the substrate may be either InN or GaN. Methods of growing relatively defect free nanowires and associated structures for group IIIA-nitrides are presented without the requirement for foreign metal catalysts, overcoming the non-uniform growth of prior art techniques and allowing self-organizing quantum dot, quantum well and quantum dot-in-a-dot structures to be formed. Such metal-nitride nanowires and quantum structure embedded nanowires support a variety of devices including but not limited to very high efficiency electronics, solid state light sources, photovoltaics, and photoelectrochemical devices, and photobiological devices.

主权项

1. A device comprising:
a substrate having at least one semiconductor structure of a plurality of semiconductor structures formed thereupon, the at least one semiconductor structure comprising a first predetermined portion formed from a first wurtzite semiconductor whose growth was initiated by providing nanoscale droplets of a group III element constituent of the wurtzite semiconductor on the surface of the substrate and absent both a foreign catalyst and other constituent elements of the first wurtzite semiconductor; and the at least one semiconductor structure of the plurality of semiconductor structures having formed upon the first predetermined portion a second predetermined portion comprising a plurality of vertically aligned quantum structures separated by a plurality of barrier layers and a second predetermined portion formed upon the plurality of vertically aligned quantum structures and plurality of barrier layers a second wurtzite semiconductor comprising at least the group III element constituent of the first wurtzite semiconductor.