Aluminum Oxide Coating for Post-growth Photo Emission Wavelength Tuning of Indium Phosphide Nanowire Networks

摘要

Semiconductor-oxide nanostructure devices can be a very intriguing material platform if optoelectronic properties of the original semiconductor nanostructures can be tuned by explicitly controlling properties of the oxide coating. This paper describes our finding that optical properties of semiconductor nanowires can be tuned by depositing a thin layer of metal oxide. In this experiment, indium phosphide nanowires were grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition on silicon substrates with gold catalyst. The nanowires formed three-dimensional nanowire networks from which collective optical properties were obtained. The nanowire network was coated with an aluminum oxide thin film deposited by plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition. We studied the dependence of the peak wavelength of photoluminescence spectra on the thickness of the oxide coatings. We observed continuous blue shift in photoluminescence spectra when the thickness of the oxide coating was increased. The observed blue shift is attributed to the Burstein-Moss effect due to increased carrier concentration in the nanowire cores caused by repulsion from an intrinsic negative fixed charge from the oxide surface. Samples were further characterized by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and selective area diffractometry in an attempt to explain the physical mechanisms for the blue shift.