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NANOTECHNOLOGY RESEARCH

General
Associated Faculty

Selected Research Profiles

• Superior coatings save industry, government billions. . .
• Beaming in on versatile lasers. . .
• Engineering dislocation structures in heterostructures. . .
  
  One major thrust of nanotechnology is the use of epitaxial thin films for devices. However, many applications have been hindered by the presence of high threading dislocation densities and strain in these heteroepitaxial materials. To address this, Dr. John Ayers and his team have developed a new technique (Patterned Heteroepitaxial Processing, or PHeP) for the production of mismatched heteroepitaxial layers free from threading dislocations. PHeP involves the growth of continuous heteroepitaxial layers, followed by the mesa patterning and annealing of the material. During the annealing step, threading dislocations are removed by glide to the sidewalls as a consequence of image forces and interdislocation forces. With NSF support, we have provably demonstrated the principles governing this process and shown that it is possible to completely remove threading dislocations from device-sized 70 ?m x 70 ?m regions of heteroepitaxial ZnSe on GaAs (001) by PHeP. Future work will focus on the application of PHeP to other semiconductors and functional oxide films.