Graduate Student Researcher, University of California, Santa Barbara
Email address: [email protected]
Presented: February 11 and 12, 2021
“Metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy of indium nitride quantum dots for infrared light-emitters”
Infrared light makes up the invisible part of our communication systems, with III-V semiconductors such as the arsenides and phosphides comprising the basis for many near-infrared light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes (LDs). Although these materials have made significant impacts on areas as diverse as communication and medicine, they struggle in areas of high temperature operation due to the small bandgap of the surrounding material causing carrier leakage from the quantum well active region. Providing an attractive alternative, the nitrides promise better thermal performance due to the wide bandgap of GaN. The III-N system has proved successful for light-emitters in the high-energy visible and ultraviolet but has faced challenges in the lower-energy regime. The most common growth technique for nitrides devices, metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy, has been used here to grow InN quantum dots capable of emitting in the near-infrared. Both In-polar and N-polar quantum dots have been grown and characterized, showing differences in morphology and emission by atomic force microscopy and photoluminescence. The formation of a wetting layer and the incorporation of gallium to form InGaN ternary alloy quantum dots were studied using atom probe tomography in order to develop a three-dimensional compositional picture. Infrared luminescence was observed for InN quatum dots capped at low temperature. Low temperature growth schemes, including pulsed growth through flow-modulation epitaxy, have been established to be used as capping layers for the InN quantum dots, which have relatively low thermal stability in comparison to other nitrides. The development of these various growth strategies has laid the foundation towards the fabrication of quantum dot InN light-emitting devices.
Caroline E. Reilly, Graduate Student Researcher, University of California, Santa Barbara
Caroline E. Reilly is a graduate student researcher in the Materials department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2017. Her current work in the group of Prof. Steven P. DenBaars with the Solid State Lighting & Energy Electronics Center focuses on metalorganic chemical vapor deposition of III-nitride materials with a specific interest in low temperature growth schemes. Caroline served as the president of the Photonics Society @ UCSB (2019-2020), a student chapter of IEEE Photonics Society, OSA, and SPIE, and is a member of all three organizations.