306

Lasers dimensions. This was indeed tried. and the dots produced worked in a fashion but not very well. The reason was the high density of surface states created during etching. The technique used nowadays is strained-layer epitaxy. lt is called self-organized because the quantum dots organize themselves. Howr Let us talk about growing InAs on GaAs. The mismatch between their lattices is about 7olo, causing strain. After the growth of a few monolayers the sbain becomes unbearable,* and the layers break up and create 3D islands. Once the growth of the islands starts, it quickly reaches saturation. Typical quantum dot

* [n more sophisticated language. one should say that after a critical thickness. the increasing strain bet\\'een the layers makes it energetically lavourable for the strain to be relieved by formation ol 3D
islands.

'fhc
ll.l-1
is lbr
comes

number of quantum dots in Fig. can be counted to be -i L Since this an area of 0.25 1tm:. the densin

densities may vary between 108 and l0ll cm-2. The shapes are quasi-pyramidal u ith a base of I 0-20 nrn and a he ight of 3- I 0 nm. In order to incorporate these dots into a device they need to be 'capped', i.e. filled up by a material, which would be GaAs in the present case. During the capping process, as may 6u expected, the heights of the InAs islands collapse down to maybe 2 nm after a GaAs cap of 2 nm. An obvious rvay of increasing the number of quantum dots is to have more layers. With the materials mentioncd above. another lai,cr of [nGaAs needs to be deposited. and then one can rcpeat the same procedure. An atomic force microscopy image of a bilayer structure+ (in this casc the second layer of quantum dots isjust above the first layer) is shorvn in Fig. i2.14.

to l.l-1

r l0lll cm l.

When

rvill

quantum dot lascrs appear cornmercially'l Reliable

mass

production techniques arc still f'ar au'av. but that is not all. There are actually still unresolved problerns concerninq their operatitln. The emission process is not as simple as it first appears. becausc the relcvant energ.v levels are nearly degenerate. i.e. verv close to each other. When an clcctron descends fiom the conduction band and rccttmbitres uith a hole it docs emit a photon. but that photon may be irnn-rediatelv rcabsorbe'd bv promoting another electron into the conduction band. This is knttu'n as .{u-ger rccombination. .\ possible remedy is to coat the quanfurn dot rvith another matcrial r','hich can localize electrons and
holes on opposing sides of the interthce.

Fig.12.14
A highly uniform dot ensemble produced by self-organizat ion.
0.5 pm

'

0.-5

pm