High efficiency broadband semiconductor nanowire devices

US9240516B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning/McGill University · CA

Inventors

• Zetian Mi · Westmount, CA
• Md Golam Kibria · Montréal, CA

Key dates

• Filing date: Jul 14, 2015
• Grant date: Jan 19, 2016
• Expiry date: Jul 14, 2035

Classification

• Technology area (CPC Y): Emerging Cross-Sectional Technologies
• CPC primary: Y02E10/548
• WIPO field: Semiconductors
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

Amongst the candidates for very high efficiency electronics, solid state light sources, photovoltaics, and photoelectrochemical devices, and photobiological devices are those based upon metal-nitride nanowires. Enhanced nanowire performance typically require heterostructures, quantum dots, etc which requirement that these structures are grown with relatively few defects and in a controllable reproducible manner. Additionally flexibility according to the device design requires that the nanowire at the substrate may be either InN or GaN. Methods of growing relatively defect free nanowires and associated structures for group IIIA-nitrides are presented without the requirement for foreign metal catalysts, overcoming the non-uniform growth of prior art techniques and allowing self-organizing quantum dot, quantum well and quantum dot-in-a-dot structures to be formed. Such metal-nitride nanowires and quantum structure embedded nanowires support a variety of devices including but not limited to very high efficiency electronics, solid state light sources, photovoltaics, and photoelectrochemical devices, and photobiological devices.