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Role of Arsenic During Aluminum Droplet Etching of Nanoholes in AlGaAs

Self-assembled nanoholes are drilled into (001) AlGaAs surfaces during molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) using local droplet etching (LDE) with Al droplets. It is known that this process requires a small amount of background arsenic for droplet material removal. The present work demonstrates that the As...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Heyn, Christian, Zocher, Michel, Schnüll, Sandra, Hansen, Wolfgang
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5037105/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27671015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s11671-016-1648-6
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author Heyn, Christian
Zocher, Michel
Schnüll, Sandra
Hansen, Wolfgang
author_facet Heyn, Christian
Zocher, Michel
Schnüll, Sandra
Hansen, Wolfgang
author_sort Heyn, Christian
collection PubMed
description Self-assembled nanoholes are drilled into (001) AlGaAs surfaces during molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) using local droplet etching (LDE) with Al droplets. It is known that this process requires a small amount of background arsenic for droplet material removal. The present work demonstrates that the As background can be supplied by both a small As flux to the surface as well as by the topmost As layer in an As-terminated surface reconstruction acting as a reservoir. We study the temperature-dependent evaporation of the As topmost layer with in situ electron diffraction and determine an activation energy of 2.49 eV. After thermal removal of the As topmost layer droplet etching is studied under well-defined As supply. We observe with decreasing As flux four regimes: planar growth, uniform nanoholes, non-uniform holes, and droplet conservation. The influence of the As supply is discussed quantitatively on the basis of a kinetic rate model.
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spelling pubmed-50371052016-10-03 Role of Arsenic During Aluminum Droplet Etching of Nanoholes in AlGaAs Heyn, Christian Zocher, Michel Schnüll, Sandra Hansen, Wolfgang Nanoscale Res Lett Nano Express Self-assembled nanoholes are drilled into (001) AlGaAs surfaces during molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) using local droplet etching (LDE) with Al droplets. It is known that this process requires a small amount of background arsenic for droplet material removal. The present work demonstrates that the As background can be supplied by both a small As flux to the surface as well as by the topmost As layer in an As-terminated surface reconstruction acting as a reservoir. We study the temperature-dependent evaporation of the As topmost layer with in situ electron diffraction and determine an activation energy of 2.49 eV. After thermal removal of the As topmost layer droplet etching is studied under well-defined As supply. We observe with decreasing As flux four regimes: planar growth, uniform nanoholes, non-uniform holes, and droplet conservation. The influence of the As supply is discussed quantitatively on the basis of a kinetic rate model. Springer US 2016-09-26 /pmc/articles/PMC5037105/ /pubmed/27671015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s11671-016-1648-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2016 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Nano Express
Heyn, Christian
Zocher, Michel
Schnüll, Sandra
Hansen, Wolfgang
Role of Arsenic During Aluminum Droplet Etching of Nanoholes in AlGaAs
title Role of Arsenic During Aluminum Droplet Etching of Nanoholes in AlGaAs
title_full Role of Arsenic During Aluminum Droplet Etching of Nanoholes in AlGaAs
title_fullStr Role of Arsenic During Aluminum Droplet Etching of Nanoholes in AlGaAs
title_full_unstemmed Role of Arsenic During Aluminum Droplet Etching of Nanoholes in AlGaAs
title_short Role of Arsenic During Aluminum Droplet Etching of Nanoholes in AlGaAs
title_sort role of arsenic during aluminum droplet etching of nanoholes in algaas
topic Nano Express
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5037105/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27671015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s11671-016-1648-6
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