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Two- versus three-dimensional quantum confinement in indium phosphide wires and dots

Nature Materials volume 2, pages 517–520 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

The size dependence of the bandgap is the most identifiable aspect of quantum confinement in semiconductors; the bandgap increases as the nanostructure size decreases1,2,3. The bandgaps in one-dimensional (1D)-confined wells, 2D-confined wires, and 3D-confined dots should evolve differently with size as a result of the differing dimensionality of confinement1. However, no systematic experimental comparisons of analogous 1D, 2D or 3D confinement systems have been made. Here we report growth of indium phosphide (InP) quantum wires having diameters in the strong-confinement regime, and a comparison of their bandgaps with those previously reported for InP quantum dots4,5,6,7. We provide theoretical evidence to establish that the quantum confinement observed in the InP wires is weakened to the expected extent, relative to that in InP dots, by the loss of one confinement dimension. Quantum wires sometimes behave as strings of quantum dots8, and we propose an analysis to generally distinguish quantum-wire from quantum-dot behaviour.

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Figure 1: Predictions of simple particle-in-a-box models for the size dependences of the kinetic confinement energies of electrons and holes in corresponding quantum wells, wires and dots.
Figure 2: Transmission electron microscope images of InP quantum wires.
Figure 3: Spectral data.
Figure 4: Experimental InP quantum-dot (red squares)4,5,6 and quantum-wire (blue squares) data plotted as ΔEg versus 1/d2.
Figure 5: Theoretical and experimental InP quantum-dot and quantum-wire data plotted as ΔEg versus 1/dn, for n = 1.35 (dot) and 1.45 (wire).

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Acknowledgements

The experimental work was funded by the USA National Science Foundation (CHE-0092735). The semiempirical pseudopotential calculations were supported by the USA Department of Energy (Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098), using the resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. We thank P. C. Gibbons for helpful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Washington University, St. Louis, 63130-4899, Missouri, USA

    Heng Yu, Richard A. Loomis & William E. Buhro

  2. Computational Research Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Jingbo Li & Lin-Wang Wang

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  1. Heng Yu
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Correspondence to Lin-Wang Wang or William E. Buhro.

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Yu, H., Li, J., Loomis, R. et al. Two- versus three-dimensional quantum confinement in indium phosphide wires and dots. Nature Mater 2, 517–520 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat942

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