Open Access SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Self-Assembled Local Artificial Substrates of GaAs on Si Substrate

S Bietti1, C Somaschini1, N Koguchi1, C Frigeri2 and S Sanguinetti1*

Author Affiliations

1 L-NESS and Dipartimento di Scienza dei Materiali, Universita’ di Milano Bicocca, via Cozzi 53, 20125, Milan, Italy

2 Istituto CNR-IMEM, Parco Area delle Scienze 37/A, 43100, Parma, Italy

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Nanoscale Research Letters 2010, 5:1905-1907 doi:10.1007/s11671-010-9760-5

Published: 31 August 2010

Abstract

We propose a self-assembling procedure for the fabrication of GaAs islands by Droplet Epitaxy on silicon substrate. Controlling substrate temperature and amount of supplied gallium is possible to tune the base size of the islands from 70 up to 250 nm and the density from 107 to 109 cm−2. The islands show a standard deviation of base size distribution below 10% and their shape evolves changing the aspect ratio from 0.3 to 0.5 as size increases. Due to their characteristics, these islands are suitable to be used as local artificial substrates for the integration of III–V quantum nanostructures directly on silicon substrate.

Keywords:
Nanotechnology; Molecular beam epitaxy; Droplet epitaxy; Integration of III–V on Si; Local artificial substrate