There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

First-principles calculations have evolved from mere aids in explaining and supporting experiments to powerful tools for predicting new materials and their properties. In the first part of this review we describe the state-of-the-art computational methodology for calculating the structure and energetics of point defects and impurities in semiconductors. We will pay particular attention to computational aspects which are unique to defects or impurities, such as how to deal with charge states and how to describe and interpret transition levels. In the second part of the review we will illustrate these capabilities with examples for defects and impurities in nitride semiconductors. Point defects have traditionally been considered to play a major role in wide-band-gap semiconductors, and first-principles calculations have been particularly helpful in elucidating the issues. Specifically, calculations have shown that the unintentional n-type conductivity that has often been observed in as-grown GaN cannot be a...

First-principles calculations for defects and impurities: Applications to III-nitrides

Gallium nitride (GaN) and its allied binaries InN and AIN as well as their ternary compounds have gained an unprecedented attention due to their wide-ranging applications encompassing green, blue, violet, and ultraviolet (UV) emitters and detectors (in photon ranges inaccessible by other semiconductors) and high-power amplifiers. However, even the best of the three binaries, GaN, contains many structural and point defects caused to a large extent by lattice and stacking mismatch with substrates. These defects notably affect the electrical and optical properties of the host material and can seriously degrade the performance and reliability of devices made based on these nitride semiconductors. Even though GaN broke the long-standing paradigm that high density of dislocations precludes acceptable device performance, point defects have taken the center stage as they exacerbate efforts to increase the efficiency of emitters, increase laser operation lifetime, and lead to anomalies in electronic devices. The p...

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Luminescence properties of defects in GaN

Titanium dioxide (TiO2 ) nanocrystals are prepared by a hydrolysis process of tetrabutyl titanate. Nanocrystal samples with various sizes of 6.8-27.9 nm are obtained after annealing from 100 to 650 °C. The crystal structures and the average particle sizes are examined using x-ray diffraction. Raman scattering was employed to investigate the evolution of the anatase phase in the nanocrystals during annealing. Phonon confinement and non-stoichiometry effects are responsible for the blueshift and broadening of the lowest-frequency Eg Raman mode. The influence of interfacial vibrations on the Raman linewidth is also discussed.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0022-3727/33/8/305/pdf

Raman scattering study on anatase TiO2 nanocrystals

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00120432/document

Raman Spectroscopy of Nanomaterials: How Spectra Relate to Disorder, Particle Size and Mechanical Properties

It has been recognized that Raman scattering spectroscopy is a powerful tool to characterize SiC crystals non-destructively. We review recent significant developments in the use of Raman scattering to study structural and electronic properties of SiC crystals. The areas to be discussed in the first part include polytype identification, evaluation of stacking disorder and ion-implantation damages, and stress evaluation. The Raman scattering by electronic transitions is discussed in the second part of this article. We concentrate on the plasmon LO-phonon coupled modes whose spectral profiles are used to evaluate the carrier concentration and mobility. Anisotropic electronic properties of α-SiC and characteristics of heavily doped crystals are discussed. Semiconductor-to-metal transition and Fano interference effect are also treated.

Raman Investigation of SiC Polytypes

Terahertz radiation was generated with several designs of photoconductive antennas (three dipoles, a bow tie, and a coplanar strip line) fabricated on low-temperature-grown (LT) GaAs and semi-insulating (SI) GaAs, and the emission properties of the photoconductive antennas were compared with each other. The radiation spectrum of each antenna was characterized with the photoconductive sampling technique. The total radiation power was also measured by a bolometer for comparison of the relative radiation power. The radiation spectra of the LT-GaAs–based and SI-GaAs–based photoconductive antennas of the same design showed no significant difference. The pump-power dependencies of the radiation power showed saturation for higher pump intensities, which was more serious in SI-GaAs-based antennas than in LT-GaAs-based antennas. We attributed the origin of the saturation to the field screening of the photocarriers.

Emission characteristics of photoconductive antennas based on low-temperature-grown GaAs and semi-insulating GaAs.

LO‐phonon–plasmon–coupled modes in n‐type 4H– and 6H–SiC single crystals with free‐carrier concentrations of 1016–1018 cm−3 have been measured by Raman scattering at room temperature. The axial‐type mode for which plasma oscillation and atomic displacement are parallel to the c axis, and the planar‐type mode for which these oscillations lie in the c plane, have been individually observed. From a line‐shape analysis of the observed spectra, the plasmon frequency, carrier damping, and phonon damping have been deduced. These quantities have large differences between the axial‐ and planar‐type mode in 6H–SiC, indicating its large crystal anisotropy. On the contrary, 4H–SiC shows small anisotropy. The longitudinal and transverse effective mass components of the electron have been determined from the plasmon frequency using carrier densities derived from Hall measurements. The deduced values are m∥=1.4m0 and m⊥=0.35m0 for 6H–SiC, and m∥=0.48m0 and m⊥=0.30m0 for 4H–SiC. The carrier mobility obtained from the ana...

Raman scattering from anisotropic LO‐phonon–plasmon–coupled mode in n‐type 4H– and 6H–SiC

We have investigated the dynamical properties of the coherent anharmonic phonons generated in Bi under high density excitation. The time-resolved reflectivity in the intensely photoexcited Bi film is modulated by the coherent A(1g) phonon oscillation with a time-dependent oscillation period. As the pump power density is increased, the line shape of the A(1g) mode in the Fourier transformed spectra becomes asymmetric, and the redshift of the phonon frequency is observed. Analysis of the transient redshift with a wavelet transform reveals that the frequency of the A(1g) mode depends on the squared amplitude of the oscillation, which is attributed to an anharmonicity of the lattice potential.

Dynamics of Coherent Anharmonic Phonons in Bismuth Using High Density Photoexcitation

We have observed ultrashort electromagnetic pulse radiation from YBa2Cu3O7-δ thin-film dipole antennas. The supercurrent transient is created by the excitation of the supercarriers into quasiparticles with a femtosecond laser pulse, and freely propagated electromagnetic pulses are measured and characterized. A pulse with 0.5 ps full width at half-maximum was obtained, containing frequency components up to 2.0 THz. A femtosecond time-resolved characterization of the spectra revealed that they strongly depend on the excitation conditions, and the quasiparticle recombination time becomes longer with increase in the excitation intensity. It is also observed that the radiation power increases in proportion to the square of both the bias current and the laser power in the region of weak excitation, which is consistent with the classical theory based on a two-fluid model. In the region of strong excitation, deviation from the classical theory was observed.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1143/JJAP.35.2624/pdf

Shin-ichi Nakashima

Papers

Raman Investigation of SiC Polytypes

Emission characteristics of photoconductive antennas based on low-temperature-grown GaAs and semi-insulating GaAs.

Raman scattering from anisotropic LO‐phonon–plasmon–coupled mode in n‐type 4H– and 6H–SiC

Dynamics of Coherent Anharmonic Phonons in Bismuth Using High Density Photoexcitation

Ultrashort Electromagnetic Pulse Radiation from YBCO Thin Films Excited by Femtosecond Optical Pulse