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Ultra-low surface recombination velocity in passivated InGaAs/InP nanopillars Aura Higuera-Rodriguez, Bruno Romeira, Simone Birindelli, Lachlan E. Black, Barry Smalbrugge, Peter J. van Veldhoven, Wilhelmus (Erwin) M.M Kessels, Meint K. Smit, and Andrea Fiore Nano Lett., Just Accepted Manuscript • Publication Date (Web): 24 Mar 2017 Downloaded from http://pubs.acs.org on March 25, 2017
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Ultra-low surface recombination velocity in passivated InGaAs/InP nanopillars A. Higuera-Rodriguez1,2‡*, B. Romeira1,3‡*, S. Birindelli1,3, L. E. Black1,4, E. Smalbrugge1,5, P. J. van Veldhoven1,5, W. M. M. Kessels1,4, M. K. Smit1,2, and A. Fiore1,3 1
Institute for Photonic Integration, Eindhoven University of Technology, Postbus 513, 5600 MB
Eindhoven, The Netherlands 2
Photonic Integration, Department of Electrical Engineering, Eindhoven University of
Technology, Postbus 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands 3
Photonics and Semiconductor Nanophysics, Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven
University of Technology, Postbus 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands 4
Plasma & Materials Processing, Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of
Technology, Postbus 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands 5
NanoLab@TU/e, Eindhoven University of Technology, Postbus 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The
Netherlands
KEYWORDS: InGaAs, nanopillars, surface passivation, surface recombination velocity
ABSTRACT
The III-V semiconductor InGaAs is a key material for photonics since it provides optical emission and absorption in the 1.55 µm telecommunication wavelength window. However, InGaAs suffers from pronounced non-radiative effects associated with its surface states, which
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affect the performance of nanophotonic devices for optical interconnects, namely nanolasers and nanodetectors. This work reports the strong suppression of surface recombination of undoped InGaAs/InP nanostructured semiconductor pillars using a combination of ammonium sulfide, (NH4)2S, passivation and silicon oxide, SiOx, coating. An 80-fold enhancement in the photoluminescence (PL) intensity of sub-micrometer pillars at a wavelength of 1550 nm is observed as compared with the unpassivated nanopillars. The PL decay time of ~0.3 µm wide square nanopillars is dramatically increased from ~100 ps to ~25 ns after sulfur treatment and SiOx coating. The extremely long lifetimes reported here, to our knowledge, the highest reported to date for undoped InGaAs nanostructures, are associated to a record-low surface recombination velocity of ~260 cm/s. We also conclusively show that the SiOx capping layer plays an active role in the passivation. These results are crucial for the future development of high-performance nanoscale optoelectronic devices for applications in energy-efficient data optical links, singlephoton sensing, and photovoltaics.
MAIN TEXT Scaling down optoelectronic devices, including light sources and detectors, to sub-micrometer sizes is required to achieve small footprint, low energy consumption and ultra-high speed, as needed for example in energy efficient and low-cost optical interconnects.1 In the last few years, there has been an explosion of novel nanoscale light sources, such as photonic crystal lasers,2–5 metal-dielectric nanocavity lasers,6–11 and nano-light-emitting diodes (nanoLEDs),12–14 employing III-V compound semiconductor materials as the gain medium. Despite recent efforts, difficulties in achieving efficient nanoscale optoelectronic devices, specifically nanolasers with continuous wave (CW) operation at room temperature (RT) and high output optical power,
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considerably limits their use in optical communication systems and interconnects. Future on-chip optical interconnects require ultra-compact light sources working efficiently (
