QUANTUM WIRES AND DOTS - DEFECT RELATED EFFECTS

This paper compares the evidence for dry etch damage from studies of conductance of nanometre-scale wires and the luminescence of nanometre-scale patterned quantum wells. It presents a quantitative model for the effects of dry etch damage in conducting wires, which may account for the dead layers observed in some luminescence experiments. Taken with other models of exciton diffusion and intrinsic luminescence quenching due to phonon bottlenecking, we may now have a complete description of systematic variations in luminescence with size. Nonsystematic variations in luminescence data may be a result of point defects in the epitaxially-grown material: cathodoluminescence mapping and PL measurements on wires of different length point to such a mechanism.