InP nanocrystals on silicon for optoelectronic applications

One of the solutions enabling performance progress, which can overcome the downsizing limit in silicon technology, is the integration of different functional optoelectronic devices within a single chip. Silicon with its indirect band gap has poor optical properties, which is its main drawback. Therefore, a different material has to be used for the on-chip optical interconnections, e.g. a direct band gap III-V compound semiconductor material. In the paper we present the synthesis of single crystalline InP nanodots (NDs) on silicon using combined ion implantation and millisecond flash lamp annealing techniques. The optical and microstructural investigations reveal the growth of high quality (100) oriented InP nanocrystals. The photocurrent and current-voltage measurements confirm the formation of n-p heterojunction between the InP NDs and silicon. The main advantage of our method is its integration with large-scale silicon technology, which also allows applying it for Si-based self-powered electronic devices.