Coupled hybrid nanostructures are demonstrated using the combination of lithographically patterned graphene on top of a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) buried in a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure. The graphene forms Schottky barriers at the surface of the heterostructure and therefore allows tuning the electronic density of the 2DEG. Conversely, the 2DEG potential can tune the graphene Fermi energy. Graphene-defined quantum point contacts in the 2DEG show half-plateaus of quantized conductance in finite bias spectroscopy and display the 0.7 anomaly for a large range of densities in the constriction, testifying to their good electronic properties. Finally, we demonstrate that the GaAs nanostructure can detect charges in the vicinity of the heterostructure's surface. This confirms the strong coupling of the hybrid device: localized states in the graphene ribbon could in principle be probed by the underlying confined channel. The present hybrid graphene/GaAs nanostructures are promising for the investigation of strong interactions and coherent coupling between the two fundamentally different materials.
Superlattices are promising low-dimensional nanomaterials for thermoelectric technology that is capable of directly converting low-grade heat energy to useful electrical power. In this work, the thermal conductivities of GaAs/Ge superlattice nanostructures were investigated systematically in relation to their morphologies and interfaces. Thermal conductivities were measured using ultrafast time-domain thermoreflectance and were found to decrease with increasing interface densities, consistent with our understanding of microscopic phonon transport in the particle regime. Lower thermal conductiv…
A nano-fabrication technique is presented which enables the fabrication of highly tunable devices on p-type, C-doped GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures containing shallow two-dimensional hole systems. The high tunability of these structures is provided by the complementary electrostatic effects of intrinsic in-plane gates and evaporated metallic top-gates. Quantum point contacts fabricated with this technique were tested by electrical conductance spectroscopy.
We study the electronic properties of GaAs nanowires composed of both the zincblende and wurtzite modifications using a ten-band k.p model. In the wurtzite phase, two energetically close conduction bands are of importance for the confinement and the energy levels of the electron ground state. These bands form two intersecting potential landscapes for electrons in zincblende/wurtzite nanostructures. The energy difference between the two bands depends sensitively on strain, such that even small strains can reverse the energy ordering of the two bands. This reversal may already be induced by the …
Accurate modeling of electronic properties of nanostructures is a challenging theoretical problem. Methods making use of continuous media approximation, such as k.p, sometimes struggle to reproduce results obtained with more accurate atomistic approaches. On the contrary, atomistic schemes generally come with a substantially larger cost of computation. Here, we bridge between these two approaches by taking 8-band k.p method augmented with non-linear strain terms fit to reproduce sp3d5s* tight-binding results. We illustrate this method on the example of electron and hole states confined in quan…
We present measurements of low frequency charge noise and conductance drift in modulation doped GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures grown by molecular beam epitaxy in which the silicon doping density has been varied from $2.4\times 10^{18} cm^{-3}$ (critically doped) to $6.0\times 10^{18} cm^{-3}$ (overdoped). Quantum point contacts were used to detect charge fluctuations. A clear reduction of both short time scale telegraphic noise and long time scale conductance drift with decreased doping density was observed. These measurements indicate that the {\it neutral} doping region plays a significant rol…
Surface energies play a dominant role in the self-assembly of three dimensional (3D) nanostructures. In this letter, we show that using surfactants to modify surface energies can provide a means to externally control nanostructure self-assembly, enabling the synthesis of novel hierarchical nanostructures. We explore Bi as a surfactant in the growth of InAs on the {1-10} sidewall facets of GaAs nanowires. The presence of surface Bi induces the formation of InAs 3D islands by a process resembling the Stranski-Krastanov mechanism, which does not occur in the absence of Bi on these surfaces. The I…
The out-of-plane g-factor g_perp for quasi-2D holes in a (100) GaAs heterostructure is studied using a variable width quantum wire. A direct measurement of the Zeeman splitting is performed in a magnetic field applied perpendicular to the 2D plane. We measure an out-of-plane g-factor up to g_perp = 5, which is larger than previous optical studies of g_perp, and is approaching the long predicted but never experimentally verified out-of-plane g-factor of 7.2 for heavy holes.
We have investigated the temperature-dependent morphology and composition changes occurring during a controlled self-assembling of thin Au film on the Gallium arsenide (001) surface utilizing electron microscopy at nano and atomic levels. It has been found that the deposition of 2 ML of Au at a substrate temperature lower than 798 K leads to the formation of pure Au nanoislands. For the deposition at a substrate temperature of about 798 K the nanostructures of the stoichiometric AuGa phase were/had been grown. Gold deposition at higher substrate temperatures results in the formation of octagon…
Free standing beams containing a two-dimensional electron system are shaped from a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure. Quantum point contacts and (double) quantum dots are laterally defined using metal top gates. We investigate the electronic properties of these nanostructures by transport spectroscopy. Tunable localized electron states in freely suspended nanostructures are a promising tool to investigate the electron-phonon-interaction.
Two types of spintronic devices on the base of magnetic nanostructures containing silicon dioxide films with cobalt nanoparticles SiO2(Co) on GaAs substrate - magnetic sensors and field-effect transistor governed by applied magnetic field - are studied. Magnetic sensors are based on the injection magnetoresistance effect. This effect manifests itself in avalanche suppression by the magnetic field in GaAs near the SiO2(Co)/GaAs interface. Field-effect transistor contains the SiO2(Co) film under gate. It is found that the magnetic field action leads to great changes in electron mobility in the c…
The growth and atomic/electronic structure of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE)-grown ErAs nanoparticles and nanorods embedded within a GaAs matrix are examined for the first time via cross-sectional scanning tunneling microscopy (XSTM) and spectroscopy (XSTS). Cross sections enable the interrogation of the internal structure and are well suited for studying embedded nanostructures. The early stages of embedded ErAs nanostructure growth are examined via these techniques and compared with previous cross sectional TEM work. Tunneling spectroscopy I(V) for both ErAs nanoparticles and nanorods was also…
We study low-frequency noise in current passing through quantum point contacts fabricated from several GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures with different layer structures and fabrication processes. In contrast to previous reports, there is no gate-dependent random telegraph noise (RTN) originating from tunneling through a Schottky barrier in devices fabricated using the standard low-damage process. Gate-dependent RTN appears only in devices fabricated with a high-damage process that induces charge trap sites. We show that the insertion of AlAs/GaAs superlattices in the AlGaAs barrier helps to suppres…
Among newly discovered two-dimensional (2D) materials, semiconducting ultrathin sheets of MoS2 show potential for nanoelectronics. However, the carrier mobility in MoS2 is limited by scattering from surface impurities and the substrate. To probe the sources of scattering, we use a cooled scanning probe microscope (SPM) to image the flow of electrons in a MoS2 Hall bar sample at 4.2 K. Capacitive coupling to the SPM tip changes the electron density below and scatters electrons flowing nearby; an image of flow can be obtained by measuring the change in resistance between two contacts as the tip …
Aluminum, as a metallic material for plasmonics, is of great interest because it extends the applications of surface plasmon resonance into the ultraviolet (UV) region and excels noble metals in the natural abundance, cost and compatibility with modern semiconductor fabrication process. Here, we present UV to near-infrared (NIR) plasmonic resonance of single-crystalline aluminum nanoslits and nanoholes. The high-definition nanostructures are fabricated with focused ion-beam (FIB) milling into an ultrasmooth single-crystalline aluminum film grown on a semiconducting GaAs substrate with molecula…
We report the simultaneous operation and two-qubit coupling measurement of a pair of two-electron spin qubits that are actively decoupled from quasistatic nuclear noise in a GaAs quadruple quantum dot array. Coherent Rabi oscillations of both qubits (decay time $\approx$2 μs; frequency few MHz) are achieved by continuously tuning the drive frequency using rapidly converging real-time Hamiltonian estimators. By state conditional exchange oscillation measurements, we also observe strong two-qubit capacitive interaction (> 190 MHz). We show that the scaling of the capacitive interaction with resp…
We study electron-phonon interaction induced decoherence between two-electron singlet and triplet states in a semiconductor double quantum dot using a spin-boson model. We investigate the onset and time evolution of this dephasing, and study its dependence on quantum dot parameters such as dot size and double dot separations, as well as the host materials (GaAs and Si). We find that electron-phonon interaction causes an initial Gaussian decay of the off-diagonal density matrix element in the singlet-triplet Hilbert space, and a long-time exponential decay originating from phonon relaxation.
A study of previously overlooked structural and optical properties of InGaAs heterostructures grown on (111)B oriented GaAs substrates patterned with inverted 7.5 um pitch pyramidal recesses is presented. First, the composition of the confinement barrier material (GaAs in this work) and its growth temperature are shown as some of the key parameters that determine the main quantum dot properties, including nontrivial emission energy dependence, excitonic pattern and unusual photoluminescence energetic ordering of the InGaAs ensemble nanostructures. Secondly, the formation of a formerly unidenti…
We theoretically consider solid state nuclear spins in a semiconductor nanostructure environment as long-lived, high-fidelity quantum memory. In particular, we calculate, in the limit of a strong applied magnetic field, the fidelity versus time of P donor nuclear spins in random bath environments of Si and GaAs, and the lifetime of excited intrinsic spins in polarized Si and GaAs environments. In the former situation, the nuclear spin dephases due to spectral diffusion induced by the dipolar interaction among nuclei in the bath. We calculate the decay of nuclear spin quantum memory in the cont…
A magnetophotoluminescence study of the carrier transfer with hybrid InAs/GaAs quantum dot(QD)-InGaAs quantum well (QW) structures is carried out where we observe an unsual dependence of the photoluminescence (PL) on the GaAs barrier thickness at strong magnetic field and excitation density. For the case of a thin barrier the QW PL intensity is observed to increase at the expense of a decrease in the QD PL intensity. This is attributed to changes in the interplane carrier dynamics in the QW and the wetting layer (WL) resulting from increasing the magnetic field along with changes in the coupli…
The modeling of finite-extent semiconductor nanostructures that are embedded in a host material requires the numerical treatment of the boundary in a finite simulation domain. For the study of a self-assembled InAs dot embedded in GaAs, three kinds of boundary conditions are examined within the empirical tight-binding model: (i) the periodic boundary condition, (ii) raising the orbital energies of surface atoms, and (iii) raising the energies of dangling bonds at the surface. The periodic boundary condition requires a smooth boundary and consequently a larger GaAs buffer than the two nonperiod…
Self-selective growth of GaAs1-xBix on GaAs zinc blende/wurtzite nanowire heterostructures
Lund University（隆德大学）；NanoLund, Lund University（隆德大学纳米隆德）；Centre for Analysis and Synthesis, Lund University（隆德大学分析与合成中心）；MAX IV Laboratory, Lund University（隆德大学MAX IV实验室）；Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen（哥本哈根大学尼尔斯玻尔研究所）
We investigate theoretically the linear and nonlinear conductance through a nanostructure with two-fold degenerate single levels, corresponding to the transport through nanostructures such as a carbon nanotube, or double dot systems with capacitive interaction. It is shown that the presence of the interaction asymmetry between orbits/dots affects significantly the profile of the linear conductance at finite temperature, and, of the nonlinear conductance, particularly around half-filling, where the two-particle Kondo effect occurs. Within the range of experimentally feasible parameters, the SU(…
Ion beam irradiation of semiconductors is a method to produce regular periodic nanoscale patterns self-organized on wafer scale. At low temperatures, the surface of semiconductors is typically amorphized by the ion beam. Above a material dependent dynamic recrystallization temperature however, the surface remains crystalline and ion beam irradiation produces regular arrays of faceted ripples on III-V semiconductors. This provides a powerful single-step technique for the production of nanostructures on a large area. On $(001)$ surfaces these ripples are parallel to the $[1\bar{1}0]$ direction w…
The compound semiconductor gallium arsenide (GaAs) provides an ultra-clean platform for storing and manipulating quantum information, encoded in the charge or spin states of electrons confined in nanostructures. The absence of inversion symmetry in the zinc-blende crystal structure of GaAs however, results in strong piezoelectric coupling between lattice acoustic phonons and electrons, a potential hindrance for quantum computing architectures that can be charge-sensitive during certain operations. Here we examine phonon generation in a GaAs double dot, configured as a single- or two-electron c…
We present a highly controllable double quantum dot device based on bilayer graphene. Using a device architecture of interdigitated gate fingers, we can control the interdot tunnel coupling between 1 to 4 GHz and the mutual capacitive coupling between 0.2 and 0.6 meV, independently of the charge occupation of the quantum dots. The charging energy and hence the dot size remains nearly unchanged. The tuning range of the tunnel coupling covers the operating regime of typical silicon and GaAs spin qubit devices.
The formation of nanostructures during metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxy on patterned (001)/(111)B GaAs substrates is reviewed. The focus of this review is on the seminal experiments that revealed the key kinetic processes during nanostructure formation and the theory and modelling that explained the phenomenology in successively greater detail. Experiments have demonstrated that V-groove quantum wires and pyramidal quantum dots result from self-limiting concentration profiles that develop at the bottom of V-grooves and inverted pyramids, respectively. In the 1950s, long before the practical im…
Epitaxial InAs/GaAs Quantum Dots (QDs) are widely used as highly efficient and pure sources of single photons and entangled photon-pairs, however reliable wafer-scale growth techniques have proved elusive. Growth of two-dimensional Quantum Well (QW) thin-films can be achieved with atomic precision down to below the de Broglie wavelength of electrons in the material, exposing the quantum particle-in-a-box energy vs. thickness-squared relationship. However, difficulties in controlling the exact moment of nanostructure nucleation obscure this behaviour in epitaxial QD material, preventing a clear…
GaAs-based two-dimensional electron gases (2DEGs) show a wealth of remarkable electronic states, and serve as the basis for fast transistors, research on electrons in nanostructures, and prototypes of quantum-computing schemes. All these uses depend on the extremely low levels of disorder in GaAs 2DEGs, with low-temperature mean free paths ranging from microns to hundreds of microns. Here we study how disorder affects the spatial structure of electron transport by imaging electron flow in three different GaAs/AlGaAs 2DEGs, whose mobilities range over an order of magnitude. As expected, electro…
We analyze and give estimates for the long-distance coupling via floating metallic gates between different types of spin qubits in quantum dots made of different commonly used materials. In particular, we consider the hybrid, the singlet-triplet, and the spin-$1/2$ qubits, and the pairwise coupling between each type of these qubits with another hybrid qubit in GaAs, InAs, Si, and $\mathrm{Si_{0.9}Ge_{0.1}}$. We show that hybrid qubits can be capacitively coupled strongly enough to implement two-qubit gates, as long as the distance of the dots from the metallic gates is small enough. Thus, hybr…
We present the simulation, fabrication and optical characterization of plasmonic gold bowtie nanoantennas on a semiconducting GaAs substrate as geometrical parameters such as size, feed gap, height and polarization of the incident light are varied. The surface plasmon resonance was probed using white light reflectivity on an array of nominally identical, 35nm thick Au antennas. To elucidate the influence of the semiconducting, high refractive index substrate, all experiments were compared using nominally identical structures on glass. Besides a linear shift of the surface plasmon resonance fro…
We present an inverted GaAs 2D electron gas with self-assembled InAs quantum dots in close proximity, with the goal of combining quantum transport with quantum optics experiments. We have grown and characterized several wafers -- using transport, AFM and optics -- finding narrow-linewidth optical dots and high-mobility, single subband 2D gases. Despite being buried 500 nm below the surface, the dots are clearly visible on AFM scans, allowing precise localization and paving the way towards a hybrid quantum system integrating optical dots with surface gate-defined nanostructures in the 2D gas.
The k.p perturbation method for determination of electronic structure first pioneered by Kohn and Luttinger continues to provide valuable insight to several band structure features. This method has been adopted to heterostructures confined up to three directions. In this paper, numerical details of setting up a k.p Hamiltonian using the finite difference approximation for such confined nanostructures is explicitly demonstrated. Nanostructures belonging to two symmetry classes namely cubic zincblende and rhombohedral crystals are considered. Rhombohedral crystals, of late, have gained prominenc…
Core-shell GaAs-based nanowires monolithically integrated on Si constitute a promising class of nanostructures that could enable light emitters for fast inter- and intrachip optical connections. We introduce and fabricate a novel coaxial GaAs/(In,Ga)As dot-in-a-well nanowire heterostructure to reach spontaneous emission in the Si transparent region, which is crucial for applications in Si photonics. Specifically, we achieve room temperature emission at 1.27 $μ$m in the telecommunication O band. The presence of quantum dots in the heterostructure is evidenced by a structural analysis based on s…
Single dopants in semiconductor nanostructures have been studied in great details recently as they are good candidates for quantum bits, provided they are coupled to a detector. Here we report coupling of a single As donor atom to a single-electron transistor (SET) in a silicon nanowire field-effect transistor. Both capacitive and tunnel coupling are achieved, the latter resulting in a dramatic increase of the conductance through the SET, by up to one order of magnitude. The experimental results are well explained by the rate equations theory developed in parallel with the experiment.
Numerous efforts have been devoted to improve the electronic and optical properties of III-V compound materials via reduction of their nonradiative states, aiming at highly-efficient III-V sub-micrometer devices. Despite many advances, there is still a controversial debate on which combination of chemical treatment and capping dielectric layer can best reproducibly protect the crystal surface of III-Vs, while being compatible with readily available plasma deposition methods. This work reports on a systematic experimental study on the role of sulfide ammonium chemical treatment followed by diel…
We present optical investigations of hybrid plasmonic nanosystems consisting of lithographically defined plasmonic Au-waveguides or beamsplitters on GaAs substrates coupled to proximal self-assembled InGaAs quantum dots. We designed a sample structure that enabled us to precisely tune the distance between quantum dots and the sample surface during nano-fabrication and demonstrated that non-radiative processes do not play a major role for separations down to $\sim 10 nm$. A polarized laser beam focused on one end of the plasmonic nanostructure generates propagating surface plasmon polaritons th…
