REDUCTION OF ETCHING DAMAGE IN THE FABRICATION OF QUANTUM WIRES

Quantum wire structures were fabricated by patterning quantum well sam ples with electron beam lithography and various wet chemical etching p rocedures. Wire structures with 800 Angstrom wire width were achieved by wet etching in NH4OH-H2O2-H2O (20:7:973). These samples were charac terized by scanning electron microscopy, photoluminescene (PL), and po larization-dependent photoluminescene excitation (PLE) measurements. T he PL spectra show significantly stronger peaks than that taken from a n unetched quantum well sample. A wire width of 400 Angstrom was estim ated from the blue shift of PL peaks. A 22% anisotropy was observed fr om polarization-dependent PLE spectra, further indicating the existenc e of two-dimensional quantum confinement.