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Outline
What is nano-material and why we are
interested in it?
Ways lead to the realization of nano-materials
Optical and electronic properties of nanomaterials
Applications
What is nano-material ?
Narrow definition: low dimension semiconductor
structures including quantum wells, quantum
wires, and quantum dots
Unlike bulk semiconductor material, artificial
structure in nanometer scale (from a few nms to
a few tens of nms, 1nm is about 2 monolayers/lattices) must be introduced in addition to
the naturally given semiconductor crystalline
structure
3
2 ) r ,t i r ,t
2m0
t
Solution:
k e
i ( k r Et / )
2
2
|k |
k 2l / L, l 1,2,3,... E
2m0
[
V0 (r )] r ,t i r ,t
2 m0
t
e2
V0 (r ) V0 ( r lR )
V0 ( r )
r
Solution:
2
2
|k |
i ( k r Et / )
E
nk e
nk
2meff
V0 (r ) Vnano (r )] r ,t i r ,t
2m0
t
Vnano (r )
Solution:
nk e
iEt /
Fn ,k (r ) nk
Bulk semiconductor
plane wave like with effective mass, two different type of
electrons identified with opposite sign of their effective mass,
i.e., electrons and holes
parabolic band dispersion (E~k) relation
density of states in terms of E: continues square root
dependence, with different parameters for electrons/holes in
different band
9
Quantum wire
discrete energy levels in 2D cross-sectional plane for both electrons
and holes
plane wave like with (different) effective masses in 1D for electrons
and holes
dispersion (E~k) relation: parabolic bands with discrete states
inside the stop-band
density of states in terms of E: additive staircase decayed functions,
with different parameters for electrons/holes in different band
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12
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Electronic Properties
Ballistic transport a result of much reduced
electron-phonon scattering, low temperature
mobility in QW (in-plane direction) reaches a
rather absurd value ~107cm2/s-V, with
corresponding mean free path over 100m
Resulted effect electrons can be steered,
deflected and focused in a manner very similar
to optics, as an example, Youngs double slit
diffraction was demonstrated on such platform
20
Electronic Properties
Low dimension tunneling as a collective effect
of multiple nano-structures, resonance appears
due to the phase-matching requirement
Resulted effect stair case like I-V
characteristics, on the down-turn side, negative
resistance shows up
21
Electronic Properties
If excitation (charging) itself is also quantized
(through, e.g., Coulomb blockade), interaction
between the excitation quantization and the
quantized eigen states (i.e., the discrete energy
levels in nano-structure) brings us into a
completely discrete regime
Resulted effect a possible platform to
manipulate single electron to realize various
functionalities, e.g., single electron transistor
(SET) for logical gate or memory cell
22
Optical Properties
Discretization of energy levels increases the
density of states
Resulted effect enhances narrow band
correlation, such as electron-hole recombination;
for QD lasers, the threshold will be greatly
reduced
23
Optical Properties
Discretization of energy levels reduces
broadband correlation
Resulted effect reduces relaxation and
dephasing, reduces temperature dependence;
former keeps the electrons in coherence, which
is very much needed in quantum computing;
latter reduces device performance temperature
dependence (e.g., QD laser threshold and
efficiency, QD detector sensitivity, etc.)
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Optical Properties
Quantized energy level dependence on size
(geometric dimension)
Resulted effect tuning of optical
gain/absorption spectrum
25
Optical Properties
Discretization of energy levels leads to zero
dispersion at the gain peak
Resulted effect reduces chirp, a very much
needed property in dynamic application of
optoelectronic devices (e.g., optical modulators
or directly modulated lasers)
26
Applications
Light source - QD lasers, QC (Quantum
Cascade) lasers
Light detector QDIP (Quantum Dot Infrared
Photo-detector)
Electromagnetic induced transparency (EIT) to
obtain transparent highly dispersive materials
Ballistic electron devices
Tunneling electron devices
Single electron devices
27
References