Oxygen mediated synthesis of high quality InN nanowires above their decomposition temperature

Electrically or chemically tunable photodetector with ultra high responsivity using graphene/InN nanowire based mixed dimensional barristors

In this work, an electrically/chemically tunable highly sensitive photodetector based on mixed dimensional heterojunction of graphene and planar InN nanowires (NW) is presented. Controlled partial oxidation of InN has been employed to effectively reduce the high surface carrier concentration of InN, which normally prevents it from forming good rectifying contact with graphene. The resulting surface modified InN NWs have been found to form excellent Schottky junction with graphene, with an increase in effective Schottky barrier height (SBH) by over 1.1 eV and a ratio of forward and reverse bias currents exceeding 4 orders of magnitude. Moreover, very strong barristor (gate tunable heterojunction) action has been observed, withI_on/I_off ≈ 4 orders of magnitude, and SBH increase by >0.3 eV. The barristor has been demonstrated to be highly sensitive to light, especially in the ultra-voilet, visible and near IR spectra. Responsivity was found to be widely tunable by gate voltage, with the highest value exceeding 1000 A W^-1. Rise and fall times being in the range of hundreds of ms are indicative of photoconductive gain, which can be attributed to the ultra high responsivity. A method of semi-permanent molecular doping has been demonstrated to realize a two-terminal version of the photodetector, where the desired responsivity can still be achieved without requiring a back gate terminal, enabling the device to be realized on insulating substrates. The effect of encapsulation has been studied as a function of time, which has showed the long term stability of the dopant-induced enhancement and ultra high responsivity of the barristor photodetector.

Excitation dependent Raman studies of self-seeded grown InN nanoparticles with different carrier concentration

High quality InN nanoparticles are grown using an atmospheric chemical vapour deposition technique via a self-seeded catalytic approach in the temperature range of 580-650 °C. In this temperature region, the nucleation barrier of InN is overcome by seeding low density In nanoparticles prior to introduction of reactive NH3. Samples with increasing carrier densities are grown, with the help of increasing growth temperature, to understand the role of carrier density in the optical phonon structure. Near-resonance Raman spectra show completely different phonon pictures compared to those for the off-resonance spectra. A Raman forbidden mode of B1(high), because of the possible breakdown of selection rules in the near-resonance conditions, is invoked for the first time. The intensity and frequency of this mode strongly depend on the carrier concentration in the sample. In off-resonance conditions, the A1(LO) mode for the sample with higher carrier concentration is dominated by Fano interference rather than plasmon-phonon coupling. Variation of the intensity of the B1(high) mode is correlated with a band filling effect, which is substantiated by the luminescence studies of the InN samples with different carrier concentrations.

The synthesis of 3D InN architectures via chemical vapor deposition and their optical properties

Two types of 3D InN microstructures were prepared via different self-organization processes in the up- and downstream regions of the Si substrate.

Visible-wavelength polarized-light emission with small-diameter InN nanowires

Group III nitrides are widely used in commercial visible-wavelength optoelectronic devices, but materials issues such as dislocations, composition fluctuations, and strain negatively impact their efficiency. Nitride nanostructures are a promising solution to overcome these issues and to improve device performance. We used first-principles calculations based on many-body perturbation theory to study the electronic and optical properties of small-diameter InN nanowires. We show that quantum confinement in 1 nm wide InN nanowires shifts optical emission to the visible range at green/cyan wavelengths and inverts the order of the top valence bands, leading to linearly polarized visible-light emission. Quantum confinement on this scale also leads to large exciton binding energies of 1.4 eV and electronic band gaps in excess of 3.7 eV. Our results indicate that strong quantum confinement in InN nanostructures is a promising approach to developing efficient visible-wavelength light emitters.