We present an original method to magnetically pattern thin layers of (Ga,Mn)As. It relies on local hydrogen passivation to significantly lower the hole density, and thereby locally suppress the carrier-mediated ferromagnetic phase. The sample surface is thus maintained continuous, and the minimal structure size is of about 200 nm. In micron-sized ferromagnetic dots fabricated by hydrogen passivation on perpendicularly magnetized layers, the switching fields can be maintained closer to the continuous film coercivity, compared to dots made by usual dry etch techniques.
GaN based high electron mobility transistors show promise in numerous device applications which elicits the need for accurate models of bulk, surface, and interface electronic properties. We detail here a hybrid density functional theory study of zinc blende (zb) GaN and diamond bulk and surface properties, and zb GaN on diamond interfaces using slab supercell models. Details are provided on the dependence of electronic properties with respect to supercell size, the use of pseudo-hydrogen to passivate the bottom GaN layer, and dipole corrections. The large bulk modulus of diamond provides a te…
There is a large discrepancy between the experimental observations and the theoretical predictions in the morphology of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) nanosheets. Theoretically-predicted hexagons terminated by armchair edges are not observed in experiments; and experimentally-observed triangles terminated by zigzag edges are found theoretically unstable. There are two key issues in theoretical investigations, namely, an efficient and accurate algorithm of absolute formation energy of h-BN edges, and a good understanding of the role of hydrogen passivation during h-BN growth. Here, we first pro…
Effects of Edge Passivations on the Electronic and Magnetic Properties of Zigzag Boron-Nitride Nanoribbons with Even and Odd-Line Stone-Wales (5-7 Pair) Defects
At the few-atom-thick limit, transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) exhibit a host of attractive electronic optical, and structural properties. The possibility to pattern these properties has a great impact on applied and fundamental research. Here, we demonstrate spatial control over the light emission, lattice deformation, and hydrogen storage in bulk TMDs. By low-energy proton irradiation, we create uniquely favorable conditions for the production and accumulation of molecular hydrogen just one or few monolayers beneath the crystal basal plane of bulk WS2, WSe2, WTe2, MoSe2, and MoS2 sampl…
Ever since the first successful synthesis of stanene via epitaxial growth, numerous efforts have been devoted to improving its overall quality and exploring its topological and other exotic properties under different growth conditions. Here, using first-principles approaches, we reveal the atomistic growth mechanisms and robust topological properties of few-layer stanene on Bi(111). We first show that monolayer stanene grown on Bi(111) follows a highly desirable nucleation-and-growth mechanism, characterized by attractive interaction of the Sn adatoms. More importantly, we reveal that surface …
We have studied the growth of metastable face-centered-cubic, non-magnetic Fe78Ni22 thin films on silicon substrates. These films undergo a magnetic (paramagnetic to ferromagnetic) and structural (fcc to bcc) phase transformation upon ion beam irradiation and thus can serve as a template for direct writing of magnetic nanostructures by the focused ion beam. So far, these films were prepared only on single crystal Cu(100) substrates. We show that transformable Fe78Ni22 thin films can also be prepared on a hydrogen-terminated Si(100) with a 130-nm-thick Cu(100) buffer layer. The H-Si(100) substr…
Investigating intrinsic silicon oxide and a lightly doped p-type layer for evolution of tail states and estimating its impact as a passivation layer in a HIT type device
The passivation of thin Bi(1 1 1) films with hydrogen and oxide capping layers is investigated from first principles. Considering termination-related changes of the crystal structure, we show how the bands and density of states are affected. In the context of the much discussed semimetal-to-semiconductor transition and the band topology of the bulk material, we consider the effects of confinement in the whole Brillouin zone and go beyond standard density functional theory by including many-body interactions via the G$_0$W$_0$ approximation. The conductivity of unterminated films is calculated …
Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a key technique for the continued scaling of semiconductor devices, which increasingly relies on reproducible and scalable processes for interface manipulation of 3D structured surfaces on the atomic scale. While ALD allows the synthesis of conformal films at low temperature with utmost control over the thickness, atomically-defined closed coatings and surface modifications are still extremely difficult to achieve because of three-dimensional growth during nucleation. Here, we present a route towards sub-nanometer thin and continuous aluminum oxide (AlOx) coati…
