Engineering topics

Beere, H. E.

Publications and source records attributed to Beere, H. E..

9 records

DOE OSTI2016

Graphene based plasmonic terahertz amplitude modulator operating above 100 MHz

The terahertz (THz) region of the electromagnetic spectrum holds great potential in many fields of study, from spectroscopy to biomedical imaging, remote gas sensing, and high speed communication. To fully exploit this potential, fast optoelectronic devices such as amplitude and phase modulators must be developed. In this work, we present a room temperature external THz amplitude modulator based on plasmonic bow-tie antenna arrays with graphene. By applying a modulating bias to a back gate electrode, the conductivity of graphene is changed, which modifies the reflection characteristics of the incoming THz radiation. The broadband response of the device was characterized by using THz time-domain spectroscopy, and the modulation characteristics such as the modulation depth and cut-off frequency were investigated with a 2.0 THz single frequency emission quantum cascade laser. An optical modulation cut-off frequency of 105 ± 15 MHz is reported. The results agree well with a lumped element circuit model developed to describe the device.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2016

Switching between attractive and repulsive Coulomb-interaction-mediated drag in an ambipolar GaAs/AlGaAs bilayer device

We present measurements of Coulomb drag in an ambipolar GaAs/AlGaAs double quantum well structure that can be configured as both an electron-hole bilayer and a hole-hole bilayer, with an insulating barrier of only 10 nm between the two quantum wells. Coulomb drag resistivity is a direct measure of the strength of interlayer particle-particle interactions. We explore the strongly interacting regime of low carrier densities (2D interaction parameter r{sub s} up to 14). Our ambipolar device design allows a comparison between the effects of the attractive electron-hole and repulsive hole-hole interactions and also shows the effects of the different effective masses of electrons and holes in GaAs.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2015

Spatial mapping and statistical reproducibility of an array of 256 one-dimensional quantum wires

We utilize a multiplexing architecture to measure the conductance properties of an array of 256 split gates. We investigate the reproducibility of the pinch off and one-dimensional definition voltage as a function of spatial location on two different cooldowns, and after illuminating the device. The reproducibility of both these properties on the two cooldowns is high, the result of the density of the two-dimensional electron gas returning to a similar state after thermal cycling. The spatial variation of the pinch-off voltage reduces after illumination; however, the variation of the one-dimensional definition voltage increases due to an anomalous feature in the center of the array. A technique which quantifies the homogeneity of split-gate properties across the array is developed which captures the experimentally observed trends. In addition, the one-dimensional definition voltage is used to probe the density of the wafer at each split gate in the array on a micron scale using a capacitive model.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2015

Band gaps of wurtzite Sc{sub x}Ga{sub 1−x}N alloys

Optical transmittance measurements on epitaxial, phase-pure, wurtzite-structure Sc{sub x}Ga{sub 1−x}N films with 0 ≤ x ≤ 0.26 showed that their direct optical band gaps increased from 3.33 eV to 3.89 eV with increasing x, in agreement with theory. These films contained I{sub 1}- and I{sub 2}-type stacking faults. However, the direct optical band gaps decreased from 3.37 eV to 3.26 eV for Sc{sub x}Ga{sub 1−x}N films, which additionally contained nanoscale lamellar inclusions of the zinc-blende phase, as revealed by aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy. Therefore, we conclude that the apparent reduction in Sc{sub x}Ga{sub 1−x}N band gaps with increasing x is an artefact resulting from the presence of nanoscale zinc-blende inclusions.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

DOE OSTI2014

Single mode terahertz quantum cascade amplifier

A terahertz (THz) optical amplifier based on a 2.9 THz quantum cascade laser (QCL) structure has been demonstrated. By depositing an antireflective coating on the QCL facet, the laser mirror losses are enhanced to fully suppress the lasing action, creating a THz quantum cascade (QC) amplifier. Terahertz radiation amplification has been obtained, by coupling a separate multi-mode THz QCL of the same active region design to the QC amplifier. A bare cavity gain is achieved and shows excellent agreement with the lasing spectrum from the original QCL without the antireflective coating. Furthermore, a maximum optical gain of ∼30 dB with single-mode radiation output is demonstrated.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

DOE OSTI2014

Beyond modulation doping: Engineering a semiconductor to be ambipolar, or making an ON-OFF-ON transistor

Semiconductors are traditionaly either p-type or n-type, meaning that the mobile charge carriers in them are either 'holes' in the valence band or electrons in the conduction band. Ambipolar conduction implies that the experimenter should be able to populate the same channel with either electrons or holes in a controlled manner. This has been shown to be possible in newer materials like Graphene and some organic semiconductors. 'Ambipolarity' can open up new device possibilities as well as new ways to study fundamental scattering mechanisms in semiconductors. However, achieving this in a conventional high mobility structure like a GaAs-AlGaAs heterostructure/quantum well requires new thinking. It was realized, that to do this modulation doping must be given up and techniques to make an undoped heterostructure conduct, must be developed first. Such structures have been developed by only a few groups worldwide. They are of great interest to low temperature physicists working with Quantum Hall states and mesoscopic/nano structures in the ballistic regime. We discuss the reason behind this interest and the analysis of scattering mechanisms in such structures. Finally very recent experimental success in developing fully gate controlled ambipolar structures where both electron and hole mobilites exceed 1 million cm{sup 2}/Vs at low temperatures (T∼1Kelvin) are discussed. Such gated ambipolar structures can be used to analyse scattering mechanisms in ultra-high mobility 2dimensional electron and hole gases in a way that is not possible using other techniques.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

DOE OSTI2013

Mode-locked terahertz quantum cascade laser by direct phase synchronization

Mode-locking of a terahertz quantum cascade laser is achieved using multimode injection seeding. Contrary to standard methods that rely on gain modulation, here a fixed phase relationship is directly imprinted to the laser modes. In this work, we demonstrate the generation of 9 ps phase mode-locked pulses around 2.75 THz. A direct measurement of the emitted field phase shows that it results from the phase of the initial injection.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

DOE OSTI2013

Cryogenic on-chip multiplexer for the study of quantum transport in 256 split-gate devices

We present a multiplexing scheme for the measurement of large numbers of mesoscopic devices in cryogenic systems. The multiplexer is used to contact an array of 256 split gates on a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure, in which each split gate can be measured individually. The low-temperature conductance of split-gate devices is governed by quantum mechanics, leading to the appearance of conductance plateaux at intervals of 2e{sup 2}/h. A fabrication-limited yield of 94% is achieved for the array, and a “quantum yield” is also defined, to account for disorder affecting the quantum behaviour of the devices. The quantum yield rose from 55% to 86% after illuminating the sample, explained by the corresponding increase in carrier density and mobility of the two-dimensional electron gas. The multiplexer is a scalable architecture, and can be extended to other forms of mesoscopic devices. It overcomes previous limits on the number of devices that can be fabricated on a single chip due to the number of electrical contacts available, without the need to alter existing experimental set ups.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2013

Ultra-shallow quantum dots in an undoped GaAs/AlGaAs two-dimensional electron gas

We report quantum dots fabricated on very shallow 2-dimensional electron gases, only 30 nm below the surface, in undoped GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Due to the absence of dopants, an improvement of more than one order of magnitude in mobility (at 2 Multiplication-Sign 10{sup 11} cm{sup -2}) with respect to doped heterostructures with similar depths is observed. These undoped wafers can easily be gated with surface metallic gates patterned by e-beam lithography, as demonstrated here from single-level transport through a quantum dot showing large charging energies (up to 1.75 meV) and excited state energies (up to 0.5 meV).

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗