Free-standing
crystalline membranes are highly desirable owing
to recent developments in heterogeneous integration of dissimilar
materials. Van der Waals (vdW) epitaxy enables the release of crystalline
membranes from their substrates. However, suppressed nucleation density
due to low surface energy has been a challenge for crystallization;
reactive materials synthesis environments can induce detrimental damage
to vdW surfaces, often leading to failures in membrane release. This
work demonstrates a novel platform based on graphitized SiC for fabricating
high-quality free-standing membranes. After mechanically removing
epitaxial graphene on a graphitized SiC wafer, the quasi-two-dimensional
graphene buffer layer (GBL) surface remains intact for epitaxial growth.
The reduced vdW gap between the epilayer and substrate enhances epitaxial
interaction, promoting remote epitaxy. Significantly improved nucleation
and convergent quality of GaN are achieved on the GBL, resulting in
the best quality GaN ever grown on two-dimensional materials. The
GBL surface exhibits excellent resistance to harsh growth environments,
enabling substrate reuse by repeated growth and exfoliation.
Fibre-optic components fabricated on the same substrate as integrated circuits are important for future high-speed communications. One industry response has been the costly push to develop indium phosphide (InP) electronics. However, for fabrication simplicity, reliability and cost, gallium arsenide (GaAs) remains the established technology for integrated optoelectronics. Unfortunately, the GaAs bandgap wavelength (0.85 microm) is far too short for fibre optics at 1.3-1.5 microm. This has led to work on materials that have a large lattice mismatch on GaAs. Here we demonstrate the first light-emitting diode (LED) that emits at 1.5 microm fibre-optic wavelengths in GaAs using optical transitions from arsenic antisite (As(Ga)) deep levels. This is an enabling technology for fibre-optic components that are lattice-matched to GaAs integrated circuits. We present experimental results showing significant internal optical power (24 mW) and speed (in terahertz) from GaAs optical emitters using deep-level transitions. Finally, we present theory showing the ultimate limit to the efficiency-bandwidth product of semiconductor deep-level optical emitters.
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