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

The semiconductor ZnO has gained substantial interest in the research community in part because of its large exciton binding energy (60meV) which could lead to lasing action based on exciton recombination even above room temperature. Even though research focusing on ZnO goes back many decades, the renewed interest is fueled by availability of high-quality substrates and reports of p-type conduction and ferromagnetic behavior when doped with transitions metals, both of which remain controversial. It is this renewed interest in ZnO which forms the basis of this review. As mentioned already, ZnO is not new to the semiconductor field, with studies of its lattice parameter dating back to 1935 by Bunn [Proc. Phys. Soc. London 47, 836 (1935)], studies of its vibrational properties with Raman scattering in 1966 by Damen et al. [Phys. Rev. 142, 570 (1966)], detailed optical studies in 1954 by Mollwo [Z. Angew. Phys. 6, 257 (1954)], and its growth by chemical-vapor transport in 1970 by Galli and Coker [Appl. Phys. ...

/pdf/a-comprehensive-review-of-zno-materials-and-devices-21a3zjadem.pdf

A comprehensive review of zno materials and devices

Room-temperature ultraviolet lasing in semiconductor nanowire arrays has been demonstrated The self-organized, oriented zinc oxide nanowires grown on sapphire substrates were synthesized with a simple vapor transport and condensation process These wide band-gap semiconductor nanowires form natural laser cavities with diameters varying from 20 to 150 nanometers and lengths up to 10 micrometers Under optical excitation, surface-emitting lasing action was observed at 385 nanometers, with an emission linewidth less than 03 nanometer The chemical flexibility and the one-dimensionality of the nanowires make them ideal miniaturized laser light sources These short-wavelength nanolasers could have myriad applications, including optical computing, information storage, and microanalysis

Room-temperature ultraviolet nanowire nanolasers

In the past ten years we have witnessed a revival of, and subsequent rapid expansion in, the research on zinc oxide (ZnO) as a semiconductor. Being initially considered as a substrate for GaN and related alloys, the availability of high-quality large bulk single crystals, the strong luminescence demonstrated in optically pumped lasers and the prospects of gaining control over its electrical conductivity have led a large number of groups to turn their research for electronic and photonic devices to ZnO in its own right. The high electron mobility, high thermal conductivity, wide and direct band gap and large exciton binding energy make ZnO suitable for a wide range of devices, including transparent thin-film transistors, photodetectors, light-emitting diodes and laser diodes that operate in the blue and ultraviolet region of the spectrum. In spite of the recent rapid developments, controlling the electrical conductivity of ZnO has remained a major challenge. While a number of research groups have reported achieving p-type ZnO, there are still problems concerning the reproducibility of the results and the stability of the p-type conductivity. Even the cause of the commonly observed unintentional n-type conductivity in as-grown ZnO is still under debate. One approach to address these issues consists of growing high-quality single crystalline bulk and thin films in which the concentrations of impurities and intrinsic defects are controlled. In this review we discuss the status of ZnO as a semiconductor. We first discuss the growth of bulk and epitaxial films, growth conditions and their influence on the incorporation of native defects and impurities. We then present the theory of doping and native defects in ZnO based on density-functional calculations, discussing the stability and electronic structure of native point defects and impurities and their influence on the electrical conductivity and optical properties of ZnO. We pay special attention to the possible causes of the unintentional n-type conductivity, emphasize the role of impurities, critically review the current status of p-type doping and address possible routes to controlling the electrical conductivity in ZnO. Finally, we discuss band-gap engineering using MgZnO and CdZnO alloys.

/pdf/fundamentals-of-zinc-oxide-as-a-semiconductor-1s4l8bh009.pdf

Fundamentals of zinc oxide as a semiconductor

The term photonic crystals appears because of the analogy between electron waves in crystals and the light waves in artificial periodic dielectric structures. During the recent years the investigation of one-, two-and three-dimensional periodic structures has attracted a widespread attention of the world optics community because of great potentiality of such structures in advanced applied optical fields. The interest in periodic structures has been stimulated by the fast development of semiconductor technology that now allows the fabrication of artificial structures, whose period is comparable with the wavelength of light in the visible and infrared ranges.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/6354/16969/00781867.pdf

Photonic crystals

Transition metal doped III-V nitrides including Mn- or Cr-doped GaN and InN are grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Structural, electronic and magnetic properties have been investigated. Cr-doped GaN shows room temperature ferromagnetism. Bulk sensitive high-energy x-ray photoemission spectroscopy is performed at SPring-8 to elucidate electronic structure of Cr-doped GaN. It is found that the doped Cr contributes to form gap states, which pin the Fermi level. The gap state is attributed to Ga 4s originated state caused by strong hybridization between Cr 3d and band electrons of host GaN. InN-based system were grown by low temperature MBE. Highly Mn-doped InN shows spin-glass states. Anti-ferromagnetic interaction between Mn ions in InN was suggested. Contrary to the Mn-doped InN, Cr-doped InN shows ferromagnetic property at room temperature.© (2004) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Making ferromagnetic semiconductors out of III-V nitride semiconductors

Nanometer-scale characterization of lateral p-n + junction by scanning capacitance microscope

Ultrathin ZnSe/ZnS single quantum well structures have been grown by molecular beam epitaxy, on GaP substrates with high Miller indices. The optical properties of pseudomorphic ZnSe/ZnS single quantum wells have been investigated by conventional optical methods. Power-dependence and temperature-dependence measurements show that structural disorder plays an important role in ZnSe/ZnS ultrathin single quantum wells. The luminescence emission is the collective response of a group of local potentials with quantum dotlike characteristics. Consequently, the luminescence peak is the convolution of individual narrow lines. In addition, the luminescence spectra are dominated by a thermal escape of carriers when investigating the temperature dependence.

Localization and thermal escape of excitons in ultrathin ZnSe/ZnS single quantum wells linked to interfacial ZnSe quantum slabs

Adsorption processes of Se on the GaAs(111)A–(2x2) surface

We report on the local stress distribution in a GaN-based vertical light-emitting diode (V-LED) fabricated using two types of separation methods: a chemical lift-off (CLO) procedure and a laser lift-off (LLO) technique. The CLO LED exhibits a stronger donor-bound exciton (D0X) emission than the LLO LED, owing to its textured surface morphology and lower amount of damage to the structure. On the basis of the photoluminescence and Raman spectroscopy results, we determine that the CLO GaN LED has an 82 MPa lower residual stress than the LLO GaN LED. Therefore, the CLO technique can be considered as a more effective method to fabricate stress-relieved high-brightness LEDs.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0022-3727/46/15/155104/pdf

Takafumi Yao

Papers

Making ferromagnetic semiconductors out of III-V nitride semiconductors

Nanometer-scale characterization of lateral p-n + junction by scanning capacitance microscope

Localization and thermal escape of excitons in ultrathin ZnSe/ZnS single quantum wells linked to interfacial ZnSe quantum slabs

Adsorption processes of Se on the GaAs(111)A–(2x2) surface

Local stress distribution in GaN vertical light-emitting diodes fabricated using CLO and LLO methods