L. Samuelson et al., SCANNING TUNNELING MICROSCOPE AND ELECTRON-BEAM-INDUCED LUMINESCENCE IN QUANTUM WIRES, Journal of vacuum science & technology. B, Microelectronics and nanometer structures processing, measurement and phenomena, 12(4), 1994, pp. 2521-2526
Quantum wire structures of GaAs/A]GaAs have been grown by metalorganic
vapor phase epitaxy in V grooves using pre-etched corrugated substrat
es and have been characterized by high-resolution transmission electro
n microscopy. Low-temperature cathodoluminescence (CL) identifies lumi
nescence peaks with the spatial distributions of the different recombi
nations, achieving a top view spatial resolution of almost-equal-to 0.
2 mum in the CL images. Principally we report how a scanning tunneling
microscope (STM) induces local luminescence in the sample structure,
and we spectrally resolve STM-induced luminescence for the tip in diff
erent positions relative to the wires. We have recorded the luminescen
ce from a single wire and observed band-filling effects resulting from
varying levels of excitation into a wire. We have demonstrated the di
fference between recombination of electron-hole pairs generated in CL
and the recombination of injected holes from the STM tip with a therma
lized distribution of accumulated electrons in scanning tunneling lumi
nescence.