Vol 52, No 11 (2018)

We report on the stimulated emission obtained in the wavelength range of 20.3–17.4 μm on the interband transitions at T = 8–50 K in HgCdTe quantum wells placed in a dielectric waveguide formed from wide-gap CdHgTe solid solution. Heterostructures with HgCdTe quantum wells are interesting for designing long-wavelength lasers operating in the wavelength range of 25–60 μm, which is not covered by currently available quantum cascade lasers. It is shown that the maximum temperature of stimulated emission is determined by the position of lateral maxima in the dispersion dependences in the first valence subband of the quantum well. Methods for suppressing nonradiative recombination in the structures with HgCdTe quantum wells are discussed.

The electron cyclotron resonance spectra in classical and quantizing magnetic fields in asymmetric heterostructures with HgCdTe/CdHgTe quantum wells with selective barrier doping are investigated. Self-consistent calculations of the energy spectra at B = 0 and Landau levels in the framework of the 8-band Kane model using the Hartree approximation are made. The strong (~10%) splitting of the cyclotron resonance line observed in weak fields is attributed to the Rashba effect in samples with inverted and normal band structures. The evolution of absorption lines upon a variation in the magnetic field is investigated up to 34 T, when the magnetic quantization already dominates over Rashba splitting.

The effect of the arsine content (from 0 to 8 μmol), supplied to a reactor together with hydrogen, on the formation of delta-doped gallium-arsenide structures by the pulsed laser sputtering of a Mn target is investigated. It is found that an arsine molar fraction of ~2.5 μmol in the reactor atmosphere during the formation of a Mn delta-doped GaAs layer allows one to obtain single-crystal epitaxial structures with the lowest layer resistance and a ferromagnetic-paramagnetic phase transition temperature of about 40 K. Increasing the arsine content to 8 μmol or the absence of arsine in a hydrogen flow leads to a significant increase in the layer resistance in the temperature range below 150 K and a decrease in the Curie temperature. In the first case, this may be due to partial compensation of the hole conductivity by donor-type defects formed as a result of an excess of arsenic on the growing surface (arsenic atoms in Ga positions or in interstitial positions). In the second case, when no arsine is supplied to the reactor, the growth surface is likely to be enriched with gallium atoms, which makes the incorporation of Mn into the Ga sublattice difficult.

The excitation-relaxation process in electron–hole plasma upon exposure to ionizing radiation for a time shorter than the relaxation time of the mobile carrier energy and momentum is considered. By the example of the calculation of transient ionization processes in a silicon hyperhigh-frequency Schottky diode, local-equilibrium and local-nonequilibrium carrier transport models are compared. It is shown that the local-nonequilibrium model features a wider field of application for describing fast relaxation processes.

Data on the growth and physical properties of nanostructures of the type “InAsP insert embedded in InP nanowire (NW)” grown on Si (111) surfaces by Au-assisted molecular-beam epitaxy are presented. It is found that nearly 100%-coherent NWs can be grown with a widely varying surface density. A relationship between the optical and structural properties of the NWs is revealed. It is shown that the NWs under study are formed of a purely wurtzite phase. The suggested technology opens up new opportunities for the integration of direct-gap III–V materials and silicon.

A series of thin films of Si_{1 –x}Mn_x alloys with a thickness from 50 to 100 nm grown by pulsed laser deposition on an Al₂O₃ substrate in vacuum and in an argon atmosphere is investigated. The significant effect of the buffer-gas pressure in the sputtering chamber on the structural and magnetic homogeneity of the obtained films is shown. The conditions for the formation of a ferromagnetic phase with a high Curie temperature (>300 K) in the samples are studied. With the use of the Langmuir probe method, the threshold of ablation of a MnSi target by second harmonic radiation (λ = 532 nm) of a Nd:YAG Q-switch laser is determined. The time-of-flight curves for the plume ions are obtained with a change in the energy density at the target and argon pressure in the sputtering chamber. A nonmonotonic dependence of the probe time-of-flight signal amplitude on the argon pressure is established for high-energy particles of the plume.

The morphological and structural properties of a series of high-pressure high-temperature (HPHT) single-crystal diamond substrates are comprehensively studied by white-light optical interference microscopy, atomic-force microscopy, and X-ray diffraction analysis. Procedures that provide a means for characterizing the substrate parameters most critical for epitaxial application with the laboratory equipment are described. It is shown that the jewelry-type characterization of diamond substrates is insufficient to assess the possibility of their use for the epitaxial growth of chemical-vapor-deposited (CVD) diamond.

The formation and properties of locally tensile strained Ge microstructures (“microbridges”) based on Ge layers grown on silicon substrates are investigated. The elastic-strain distribution in suspended Ge microbridges is analyzed theoretically. This analysis indicates that, in order to attain the maximum tensile strain within a microbridge, the accumulation of strain in all corners of the fabricated microstructure has to be minimized. Measurements of the local strain using Raman scattering show significant enhancement of the tensile strain from 0.2–0.25% in the initial Ge film to ~2.4% in the Ge microbridges. A considerable increase in the luminescence intensity and significant modification of its spectrum in the regions of maximum tensile strain in Ge microbridges and in their vicinity as compared to weakly strained regions of the initial Ge film is demonstrated by microphotoluminescence spectroscopy.

The nucleation of three-dimentional Ge islands formed on a pre-patterned Si substrate with an array of round pits is studied. It is found that the Ge islands nucleate within pits with pointed bottoms and along the perimeters of pits with flat bottoms. This effect is determined by the difference between the distributions of elastic strains at the Ge/Si interface for differently shaped pit bottoms. The results of the simulation of growth show that, in the case of pits with pointed bottoms, the most relaxed regions are at the centers of the pit bottoms and the nucleation of islands takes place just in these regions. At the same time, in the case of pits with flat bottoms, the most relaxed regions are shifted from the pit bottoms to the pit edges, resulting in the nucleation of islands along the pit perimeters.

The mobility and quantum time of Dirac electrons in HgTe quantum wells with near-critical thickness corresponding to the transition from the direct to inverted spectrum are experimentally and theoretically investigated. The nonmonotonic dependence of the mobility on the electron concentration is experimentally established. The theory of the scattering of Dirac electrons by impurities and irregularities of the well boundaries leading to well thickness fluctuations is constructed. The comparison of this theory with an experiment shows their good agreement and explains the observed nonmonotonic behavior by a decrease in the ratio between the de Broglie wavelength of Dirac electrons and the characteristic size of irregularities with increasing electron concentration. It is established that the transport time is larger than the quantum time by almost an order of magnitude in the case of the dominance of roughness scattering. The transition from macroscopic to mesoscopic samples is studied and an abrupt decrease in both the mobility and quantum time is observed. This behavior is attributed to the size effect on the free path length.

A method for developing models of semiconductor devices with two-dimensional nonuniform concentration profiles of donors and acceptors in working regions of a semiconductor device structure is for the first time proposed based on a complex of physical-topological modeling of charge carrier transport and process simulation of the forming processes of the device structure. The application of process simulation is due to the need to correctly define the parameters of the semiconductor device structure, which are used as initial data to calculate the electron transport according to the physical-topological model. The parameters of production processes of ion implantation, diffusion, and lithography, which were refined during process simulation, are determined for a high-power metal—oxide—semiconductor (MOS) transistor forming by the double diffusion method in accordance with known electrical characteristics and measured geometrical sizes of the structure. This results in two-dimensional distribution profiles of donors and acceptors in p–n junctions necessary to calculate the transistor breakdown under the effect of pulsed γ radiation. Breakdown processes are modeled with the help of the physical-topological model based on the Poisson and continuity equations as well as expressions for the diffusion and drift current densities in the transistor. Accounting for carriers formed at the instant of γ irradiation is implemented by the introduction of the dependence of the generation coefficient of electron–hole pairs on the radiation-dose power. The results of calculations correlate well with the experimental data, which makes it possible to give a conclusion regarding the adequacy of the proposed complex model.

The deformation of a (0001)GaN epitaxial layer on the (11\(\bar {2}\)0) sapphire a-cut is studied by X-ray diffractometry. Anisotropic-layer deformation is calculated by reference data on the thermal expansion coefficients of gallium nitride and sapphire. A comparison of the calculated and experimental deformation confirms the hypothesis on the thermoelastic character of GaN deformation on the sapphire a-cut. This result makes it possible, in particular, to assess theoretically the elastic deformation and piezoelectric field in pseudomorphic heterostructures with GaN layers on the sapphire a-cut as a virtual substrate or a buffer layer.

The relaxation rates are calculated in the adiabatic approximation, in which the steady-state impurity states are taken to be electronic-vibrational (vibronic) states. The probabilities of transitions between these states with the emission (or absorption) of one or several phonons are calculated in first-order perturbation theory on the assumption that the transitions are a result of the violation of adiabaticity. The electron part of the wave function of the vibronic state is described by a simple Hamiltonian with an isotropic effective mass. The wave function of the ground state is determined by the quantum defect method. According to the calculations, a hole relaxes from the excited boron acceptor state, whose energy is 304 meV higher than the energy of the ground state, to the ground state with the emission of two optical phonons with a rate of ~10¹¹ s^–1. This value is an estimate from above, since the model of nondispersive optical phonons used in the study overestimates the number of phonon modes, whose participation in relaxation is allowed by the energy conservation law. However, despite the rough approximation, it can be concluded that the multiphonon relaxation of boron acceptor states in diamond is a fast process.