Fabrication of Ultrasmall InGaAs/InP Nanostructures by High Voltage Electron Beam Lithography and Wet Chemical Etching

Abstract

We have fabricated high quality In0.53Ga0.47As/InP quantum wires by high voltage electron beam lithography and wet chemical etching. Lateral dimensions of the wires down to 16 nm have been achieved. The wires show strong photoluminescence emission even for geometrical widths less than 20 nm and without overgrowth. The weak decrease of the quantum efficiency with decreasing wire width indicates that there is no significant damage at the sidewalls of the wires, which is in contrast to previous studies on dry-etched structures. The photoluminescence energy of the In0.53Ga0.47As/InP wires is independent of the wire dimension down to widths of 50 nm. For wires with smaller widths an increasing blue shift of photoluminescence energy up to 60 meV is observed displaying strong lateral quantization effects.