Single photon emitters in thin GaAsN nanowire tubes grown on Si

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the growth of high-quality GaAsN nanowire heterostructures on silicon that exhibit single photon emission, advancing quantum photonic device integration.

Contribution

It reports the first plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy growth of defect-free GaAsN core-multishell nanowires on Si with single photon emission capabilities.

Findings

Nanowires have a 10 nm GaAsN shell with 2.7% N reducing bandgap by 400 meV.

Nanowires exhibit defect-free zincblende phase and sharp boundaries.

Single photon emission with g(2)(0) as low as 0.056 was observed.

Abstract

III-V nanowire heterostructures can act as sources of single and entangled photons and are enabling technologies for on-chip applications in future quantum photonic devices. The unique geometry of nanowires allows to integrate lattice-mismatched components beyond the limits of planar epilayers and to create radially and axially confined quantum structures. Here, we report the plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy growth of thin GaAs/GaAsN/GaAs core-multishell nanowires monolithically integrated on Si (111) substrates, overcoming the challenges caused by the low solubility of N and a high lattice mismatch. The nanowires have a GaAsN shell of 10 nm containing 2.7% N, which reduces the GaAs bandgap drastically by 400 meV. They have a symmetric core-shell structure with sharp boundaries and a defect-free zincblende phase. The high structural quality reflects in their excellent opto-electroinic properties, including remarkable single photon emission from quantum confined states in the thin GaAsN shell with a second-order autocorrelation function at zero time delay as low as 0.056.