Porous III–V compounds as nonlinear optical materials

High-resolution synchrotron diffraction study of porous buffer InP(001) layers

X-ray reciprocal space mapping was used for quantitative investigation of porous layers in indium phosphide. A new theoretical model in the frame of the statistical dynamical theory for cylindrical pores was developed and applied for numerical data evaluation. The analysis of reciprocal space maps provided comprehensive information on a wide range of the porous layer parameters, for example, layer thickness and porosity, orientation, and correlation length of segmented pore structures. The results are in a good agreement with scanning electron microscopy data.

Enhanced ultrafast optical nonlinearity of porous anodized aluminum oxide nanostructures

Enhanced ultrafast optical nonlinearities of porous anodized aluminum oxide (AAO) nanostructures, well-known templates for quantum dots fabrication, have been investigated using the differential optical Kerr gate technique at 800 nm. The optical nonlinearity is strongly influenced by the pore number density, the pore size and the shape. Large values of the third-order nonlinear optical susceptibility (chi((3))) of the order of 10(-10)esu are measured. The nonlinear response time is faster than or comparable to the laser pulse width (90 fs) used. The origin and variation of such remarkable optical nonlinearities has been discussed by considering the nanoporous AAO as an effective medium and utilizing the extended Maxwell Garnet theory, and by considering the additional influence from pore diameter, pore shape and surface states.

Conductivity of nanoporous InP membranes investigated using terahertz spectroscopy

We have investigated the terahertz conductivity of extrinsic and photoexcited electrons in nanoporous indium phosphide (InP) at different pore densities and orientations. The form of electronic transport in the film was found to differ significantly from that for bulk InP. While photo-generated electrons showed Drude-like transport, the behaviour for extrinsic electrons deviated significantly from the Drude model. Time-resolved photoconductivity measurements found that carrier recombination was slow, with lifetimes exceeding 1 ns for all porosities and orientations. When considered together, these findings suggest that the surfaces created by the nanopores strongly alter the dynamics of both extrinsic and photoexcited electrons.