Photon emission from the nanostructures of Al<inf>x</inf>Ga<inf>1-x</inf>As-GaAs produced by conventional lithographic and reactive ion-etching techniques

A simple fabrication technique using the conventional lithography and reactive ion etching is tried to obtain AlGaAs-GaAs-based random dot pillar arrays of p-i-n structures. These nanopillars are characterized by the SEM from which the pillar statistics are obtained. The width of the pillars varies from 10 to 50 nm and the height of the pillars from 185 to 250 nm. The surface morphology of these pillar structures is also analyzed by scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The photoluminescence spectrum is obtained for etched and unetched samples. The electroluminescence is detected when applying a forward bias voltage above 1.3 V and the emitted light is observed at 830-850 nm. The temperature dependence of EL study is also discussed.