Room temperature study of strong lateral quantization effects in InGaAs/InP quantum wires

Abstract

We have fabricated In_0.53Ga_0.47As/InP quantum wires with lateral widths down to 8 nm by high voltage electron beam lithography and deep wet chemical etching. The wires were studied by photoluminescence spectroscopy at room temperature. Down to the smallest wire widths a clear photoluminescence signal is observed. The decrease of the luminescence yield with decreasing wire width indicates that no significant damage has been induced at the sidewalls of the wires during the fabrication process. For wires with widths below about 60 nm a blue shift of the photoluminescence energy is observed, which reaches up to 73 meV for 8 nm wide wires. The experimentally observed width variation of the lateral quantization can be modeled quantitatively by using the measured width of the wires and standard band parameters.