Projective techniques for the growth of compound semiconductor nanostructures

Abstract

We investigate the geometric deposition of compound semiconductors through shallow shadow masks as a means to obtain 3D nanostructures in situ. A high spatial resolution in the order of 10 nm and good material quality are achieved by epitaxy with directed molecular beams through stationary masks. Based on our study of growth dynamics new processes were tailored for the deposition of compound semiconductors. These expand the degrees of freedom of directional shadow growth. We would like to give an overview of this alternative technology, and present late results from experiments with an optimised molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) set-up. Projective techniques are demonstrated with sample structures. We discuss their respective potential and limitations. An outlook shows the perspective of further increase of the complexity of feasible structures by increasing the complexity of the masks (3D nanostructured).