Abstract
Research on band-gap engineering of Silicon-Germanium heterostructures for the realization of Quantum Cascade (QC) structures emitting in the Terahertz (THz) spectral region has recently attracted a vast interest. While several successful attempts have been reported using hole-based (p-type) intersubband transitions, very few results have been published on systems exploiting electrons (n-type). In this work we present the optical and structural characterization of n-type heterostructures made either of tensely-strained Si (sSi) quantum well (QW) confined between low Ge content Si1-xGe x barriers [0.2<x<0.5] or of compressively-strained Ge (sGe) QW confined between high Ge content Si1-xGex barriers [0.8<x<0.9]. The structural and morphological characterizations of the samples have been made by atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and Raman spectroscopy. Intersubband transitions have been experimentally investigated by absorption spectroscopy and compared with the theoretical results of a tight-binding model, which provides the electronic band structure of the complete multi quantum well system throughout the whole Brillouin zone.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | 2009 9th IEEE Conference on Nanotechnology, IEEE NANO 2009 |
Pages | 513-514 |
Number of pages | 2 |
Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2009 |
Event | 2009 9th IEEE Conference on Nanotechnology, IEEE NANO 2009 - Genoa, Italy Duration: 26 Jul 2009 → 30 Jul 2009 |
Conference
Conference | 2009 9th IEEE Conference on Nanotechnology, IEEE NANO 2009 |
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Country/Territory | Italy |
City | Genoa |
Period | 26/07/09 → 30/07/09 |
Keywords
- Silicon germanium
- Spectroscopy
- Raman scattering
- Electron optics
- Stimulated emission
- Photonic band gap