Bandgap tuning and electron mobility enhancement in strained III-V nanowires

Nanowire geometry allows for realising defect-free heterostructures with large lattice mismatch, in addition to the possibility for their monolithic integration on foreign substrates. Engineering of the built-in strain can be employed to tailor the electronic properties and fit them to the needs of photonic or electronic devices. This talk focuses on the epitaxial growth, the built-in strain and the modified electronic properties of free-standing GaAs/InxGa1-xAs and GaAs/InxAl1-xAs core/shell nanowires on Si substrates. The thin GaAs core can be hydrostatically tensile strained to a level that depends on the chemical composition and the thickness of the shell. As a result, the bandgap of the GaAs core can be tuned to be anywhere between 1.4 and 0.8 eV, with potential applications in telecom photonics. The same mechanism is employed to shift also the emission of GaAs/AlxGa1-xAs quantum dots that can be grown inside the core, in a scheme that could be employed for photon sources in quantum technology. Furthermore, the reduced effective mass of electrons inside the strained GaAs core results in increased mobility values (higher than those in unstrained GaAs nanowires or in bulk GaAs), which is promising for the advancement of gate-all-around transistors.