FABRICATION AND LUMINESCENCE OF NARROW REACTIVE ION ETCHED IN1-XGAXAS/INP AND GAAS/GA1-XALXAS QUANTUM WIRES

We present the fabrication process of narrow quantum wires in both In1-xGaxAs/InP and GaAs/Gax1-xAlxAs systems based upon e-beam lithography, lift-off, reactive ion etching and MOCVD overgrowth. The carrier lifetime, deduced from low temperature time-resolved photoluminescence, remains of the order of one nanosecond in both systems, showing the good quality of the overgrown interfaces. An efficient capture of the carriers created in the barrier material into the wires is demonstrated. One-dimension quantum confinement effects are observed for the lowest lateral sizes: in In1-xGaxAs/InP wires (width down to 15 nm), quantum shifts of the low temperature cw photoluminescence peak (up to 30 meV) are observed while in GaAs/Ga1-xAlxAs wires (width down to 20 nm), we report shifts up to 10 meV of the emission peak.