Reduction of etching damage in the fabrication of quantum wires

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Quantum wire structures were fabricated by patterning quantum well samples with electron beam lithography and various wet chemical etching procedures. Wire structures with 800 Å wire width were achieved by wet etching in NH 4OHH 2O 2H 2O (20:7:973). These samples were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, photoluminescence (PL), and polarization-dependent photoluminescence excitation (PLE) measurements. The PL spectra show significantly stronger peaks than that taken from an unetched quantum well sample. A wire width of 400 Å was estimated from the blue shift of PL peaks. A 22% anisotropy was observed from polarization-dependent PLE spectra, further indicating the existence of two-dimensional quantum confinement.