Advanced Semiconductor Heterostructures

This volume provides valuable summaries on many aspects of advanced semiconductor heterostructures and highlights the great variety of semiconductor heterostructures that has emerged since their original conception. As exemplified by the chapters in this book, recent progress on advanced semiconductor heterostructures spans a truly remarkable range of scientific fields with an associated diversity of applications. Some of these applications will undoubtedly revolutionize critically important facets of modern technology. At the heart of these advances is the ability to design and control the properties of semiconductor devices on the nanoscale. As an example, the intersubband lasers discussed in this book have a broad range of previously unobtainable characteristics and associated applications as a result of the nanoscale dimensional control of the underlying semiconductor heterostructures. As this book illustrates, an astounding variety of heterostructures can be fabricated with current technology; the potentially widespread use of layered quantum dots fabricated with nanoscale precision in biological applications opens up exciting advances in medicine. In addition, many more excellent examples of the remarkable impact being made through the use of semiconductor heterostructures are given. The summaries in this volume provide timely insights into what we know now about selected areas of advanced semiconductor heterostructures and also provide foundations for further developments.

This volume provides valuable summaries on many aspects of advanced semiconductor heterostructures and highlights the great variety of semiconductor heterostructures that has emerged since their original conception. As exemplified by the chapters in this book, recent progress on advanced semiconductor heterostructures spans a truly remarkable range of scientific fields with an associated diversity of applications. Some of these applications will undoubtedly revolutionize critically important facets of modern technology. At the heart of these advances is the ability to design and control the properties of semiconductor devices on the nanoscale. As an example, the intersubband lasers discussed in this book have a broad range of previously unobtainable characteristics and associated applications as a result of the nanoscale dimensional control of the underlying semi-conductor heterostructures. As this book illustrates, an astounding variety of heterostructures can be fabricated with current technology; the potentially widespread use of layered quantum dots fabricated with nanoscale precision in biological applications opens up exciting advances in medicine. In addition, many more excellent examples of the remarkable impact being made through the use of semi-conductor heterostructures are given. The summaries in this volume provide timely insights into what we know now about selected areas of advanced semiconductor heterostructures and also provide foundations for further developments. Contents: Novel Heterostructure Devices: Electron-Phonon Wave Interactions in Inter-subband Laser Heterostructures (M Kisin et al.); Quantum Dot Infrared Detectors and Sources (P Bhattacharya et al.);Generation of Terahertz Emission Based on Intersubband Transitions (Q Hu); Midinfrared GaSb-Based Lasers with Type I Heterointerfaces (D V Donetsky et al.); Advances in Quantum Dot Research and Technology: The Path to Applications

The extended and revised edition of this textbook provides essential information for a comprehensive upper-level graduate course on the crystalline growth of semiconductor heterostructures. Heteroepitaxy is the basis of today’s advanced electronic and optoelectronic devices, and it is considered one of the most important fields in materials research and nanotechnology. The book discusses the structural and electronic properties of strained epitaxial layers, the thermodynamics and kinetics of layer growth, and it describes the major growth techniques: metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxy, molecular-beam epitaxy, and liquid-phase epitaxy. It also examines in detail cubic and hexagonal semiconductors, strain relaxation by misfit dislocations, strain and confinement effects on electronic states, surface structures, and processes during nucleation and growth. Requiring only minimal knowledge of solid-state physics, it provides natural sciences, materials science and electrical engineering students and their lecturers elementary introductions to the theory and practice of epitaxial growth, supported by references and over 300 detailed illustrations. In this second edition, many topics have been extended and treated in more detail, e.g. in situ growth monitoring, application of surfactants, properties of dislocations and defects in organic crystals, and special growth techniques like vapor-liquid-solid growth of nanowires and selective-area epitaxy.

Heterostructure and quantum-mechanical devices promise significant improvement in the performance of electronic and optoelectronic integrated circuits (ICs). Though these devices are the subject of a vigorous research effort, the current literature is often either highly technical or narrowly focused. This book presents heterostructure and quantum devices to the nonspecialist, especially electrical engineers working with high-performance semiconductor devices. It focuses on a broad base of technical applications using semiconductor physics theory to develop the next generation of electrical engineering devices. The text covers existing technologies and future possibilities within a common framework of high-performance devices, which will have a more immediate impact on advanced semiconductor physics-particularly quantum effects-and will thus form the basis for longer-term technology development.

This book presents the underlying functional formalism routinely used in describing the operational behavior of solid state devices.

The last few years have ~een rapid improvements in semiconductor growth techniques which have produced an expanding range of high quality heterostructures for new semiconductor devises. As the dimensions of such structures approach the nanometer level, it becomes increasingly important to characterise materials properties such as composition uniformity, strain, interface sharpness and roughness and the nature of defects, as well as their influence on electrical and optical properties. Much of this information is being obtained by electron microscopy and this is also an area of rapid progress. There have been advances for thin film studies across a wide range of techniques, including, for example, convergent beam electron diffraction, X-ray and electron energy loss microanalysis and high spatial resolution cathodoluminescence as well as by conventional and high resolution methods. Important develop ments have also occurred in the study of surfaces and film growth phenomena by both microscopy and diffraction techniques. With these developments in mind, an application was made to the NATO Science Committee in late summer 1987 to fund an Advanced Research Work shop to review the electron microscopy of advanced semiconductors. This was subsequently accepted for the 1988 programme and became the "NATO Advanced Research Workshop on the Evaluation of Advanced Semiconductor Materials by Electron Microscopy". The Workshop took place in the pleasant and intimate surroundings of Wills Hall, Bristol, UK, during the week 11-17 September 1988 and was attended by fifty-five participants from fourteen countries.

Characterization of Semiconductor Heterostructures and Nanostructures is structured so that each chapter is devoted to a specific characterization technique used in the understanding of the properties (structural, physical, chemical, electrical etc..) of semiconductor quantum wells and superlattices. An additional chapter is devoted to ab initio modeling. The book has two basic aims. The first is educational, providing the basic concepts of each of the selected techniques with an approach understandable by advanced students in Physics, Chemistry, Material Science, Engineering, Nanotechnology. The second aim is to provide a selected set of examples from the recent literature of the TOP results obtained with the specific technique in understanding the properties of semiconductor heterostructures and nanostructures. Each chapter has this double structure: the first part devoted to explain the basic concepts, and the second to the discussion of the most peculiar and innovative examples. The topic of quantum wells, wires and dots should be seen as a pretext of applying top level characterization techniques in understanding the structural, electronic etc properties of matter at the nanometer (and even sub-nanometer) scale. In this respect it is an essential reference in the much broader, and extremely hot, field of Nanotechnology. Comprehensive collection of the most powerful characterization techniques for semiconductors heterostructures and nanostructures Most of the chapters are authored by scientists that are world-wide among the top-ten in publication ranking of the specific field Each chapter starts with a didactic introduction on the technique The second part of each chapters deals with a selection of top examples highlighting the power of the specific technique to analyse the properties of semiconductors heterostructures and nanostructures

Containing the most reliable parameter values for each of these semiconductor materials, along with applicable references, these data are organized in a structured, logical way for each semiconductor material. * Reviews traditional semiconductor materials as well as new, advanced semiconductors. * Essential authoritative handbook on the properties of semiconductor materials.