Bottom-up Approach to the Nanopatterning of Si(001)

The fabrication of single-crystal semiconductor nanostructures which—due to their atomic-like discrete energy levels—are suitable for laser applications, has been a topic of intense research since the early 1990s (Mo et al.,

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, 1020, 1990; Eaglesham and Cerullo,

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, 1943, 1990; Lott et al.,

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, 1384, 2000). A drawback of the common preparation procedure of such quantum dots, namely film growth by the Stranski–Krastanow (SK) mode, is the nonuniform size distribution that broadens the optical spectra compared to quantum-well devices. We follow an alternative approach based on the growth on patterned substrates, which promises dense, uniformly sized, spatially ordered, and wetting-layer-free quantum dot arrays. This article reviews our recent studies on the nanopatterning of Si(001).