Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Epitaxial growth of three-dimensionally architectured optoelectronic devices

Nature Materials volume 10, pages 676–681 (2011)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Optoelectronic devices have long benefited from structuring in multiple dimensions on microscopic length scales. However, preserving crystal epitaxy, a general necessity for good optoelectronic properties, while imparting a complex three-dimensional structure remains a significant challenge. Three-dimensional (3D) photonic crystals are one class of materials where epitaxy of 3D structures would enable new functionalities. Many 3D photonic crystal devices have been proposed, including zero-threshold lasers1,2, low-loss waveguides3,4,5, high-efficiency light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and solar cells6,7,8, but have generally not been realized because of material limitations. Exciting concepts in metamaterials, including negative refraction and cloaking, could be made practical using 3D structures that incorporate electrically pumped gain elements to balance the inherent optical loss of such devices9. Here we demonstrate the 3D-template-directed epitaxy of group III–V materials, which enables formation of 3D structured optoelectronic devices. We illustrate the power of this technique by fabricating an electrically driven 3D photonic crystal LED.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Three-dimensionally patterned GaAs photonic crystals.
Figure 2: Verification of epitaxy during 3D patterned growth.
Figure 3: Heterogeneous nucleation behaviour during 3D selective area epitaxy.
Figure 4: Surface passivation of 3D structured group III–V materials.
Figure 5: Electrically driven emission from 3D photonic crystal LED.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. John, S. Strong localization of photons in certain disordered dielectric superlattices. Phys. Rev. Lett. 58, 2486–2489 (1987).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Yablonovitch, E. Inhibited spontaneous emission in solid-state physics and electronics. Phys. Rev. Lett. 58, 2059–2062 (1987).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Lousse, V. & Fan, S. Waveguides in inverted opal photonic crystals. Opt. Express 14, 868–878 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Johnson, S. G., Villeneuve, P. R., Shanhui, F. & Joannopoulos, J. D. Linear waveguides in photonic-crystal slabs. Phys. Rev. B 62, 8212–8222 (2000).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Mekis, A. et al. High transmission through sharp bends in photonic crystal waveguides. Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 3787–3790 (1996).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Dong-Ho, K. et al. Enhanced light extraction from GaN-based light-emitting diodes with holographically generated two-dimensional photonic crystal patterns. Appl. Phys. Lett. 87, 203508 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Yu, Z., Raman, A. & Fan, S. Fundamental limit of nanophotonic light trapping in solar cells. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 107, 17491–17496 (2010).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Green, M. A. Prospects for photovoltaic efficiency enhancement using low-dimensional structures. Nanotechnology 11, 401–405 (2000).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Zheludev, N. I. The road ahead for metamaterials. Science 328, 582–583 (2010).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Blanco, A. et al. Large-scale synthesis of a silicon photonic crystal with a complete three-dimensional bandgap near 1.5 micrometres. Nature 405, 437–440 (2000).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Braun, P. V. & Wiltzius, P. Electrochemically grown photonic crystals. Nature 402, 603–604 (1999).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Graugnard, E., Chawla, V., Lorang, D. & Summers, C. J. High filling fraction gallium phosphide inverse opals by atomic layer deposition. Appl. Phys. Lett. 89, 211102 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Shir, D. et al. Three dimensional silicon photonic crystals fabricated by two photon phase mask lithography. Appl. Phys. Lett. 94, 011101 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Takahashi, S. et al. Direct creation of three-dimensional photonic crystals by a top-down approach. Nature Mater. 8, 721–725 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Noda, S., Tomoda, K., Yamamoto, N. & Chutinan, A. Full three-dimensional photonic bandgap crystals at near-infrared wavelengths. Science 289, 604–606 (2000).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Aoki, K. et al. Microassembly of semiconductor three-dimensional photonic crystals. Nature Mater. 2, 117–121 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. Subramania, G. et al. Emission modification of CdSe quantum dots by titanium dioxide visible logpile photonic crystal. Appl. Phys. Lett. 95, 151101 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Campbell, M., Sharp, D. N., Harrison, M. T., Denning, R. G. & Turberfield, A. J. Fabrication of photonic crystals for the visible spectrum by holographic lithography. Nature 404, 53–56 (2000).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Jeon, S. et al. Three-dimensional nanofabrication with rubber stamps and conformable photomasks. Adv. Mater. 16, 1369–1373 (2004).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Azoulay, R., Bouadma, N., Bouley, J. C. & Dugrand, L. Selective MOCVD epitaxy for optoelectronic devices. J. Cryst. Growth 55, 229–234 (1981).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Heinecke, H. et al. Selective growth of GaAs in the MOMBE and MOCVD systems. J. Cryst. Growth 77, 303–309 (1986).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. Oh, H-J., Sugiyama, M., Nakano, Y. & Shimogaki, Y. Surface reaction kinetics in metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy of GaAs through analyses of growth rate profile in wide-gap selective-area growth. Jpn J. Appl. Phys. 1 42, 6284–6291 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Scholz, F. et al. Selective-area epitaxy of GaInAs using conventional and novel group-III precursors. J. Cryst. Growth 145, 242–248 (1994).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. Stringfellow, G. B. Organometallic Vapor-Phase Epitaxy: Theory and Practice 2nd edn (Academic Press, 1999).

    Google Scholar 

  25. Sugiyama, M., Oh, H-J., Nakano, Y. & Shimogaki, Y. Polycrystals growth on dielectric masks during InP/GaAs selective MOVPE. J. Cryst. Growth 261, 411–418 (2004).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  26. Poling, B. E., Prausnitz, J. M. & O’Connell, J. P. Properties of Gases and Liquids 5th edn (McGraw-Hill, 2000).

    Google Scholar 

  27. Stöber, W., Fink, A. & Bohn, E. Controlled growth of monodiperse silica spheres in micron size range. J. Colloid Interface Sci. 26, 62–69 (1968).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Jiang, P., Bertone, J. F., Hwang, K. S. & Colvin, V. L. Single-crystal colloidal multilayers of controlled thickness. Chem. Mater. 11, 2132–2140 (1999).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  29. Ramanan, V., Nelson, E., Brzezinski, A., Braun, P. V. & Wiltzius, P. Three dimensional silicon-air photonic crystals with controlled defects using interference lithography. Appl. Phys. Lett. 92, 173304 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Chen, Y. C., Geddes, J. B., Lee, J. T., Braun, P. V. & Wiltzius, P. Holographically fabricated photonic crystals with large reflectance. Appl. Phys. Lett. 91, 241103 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank M. Sardella and J. Soares of the Materials Research Lab for experimental assistance and helpful discussions. The 3D epitaxy growth process development was supported by the US Army Research Office Award #DAAD19-03-1-0227, fabrication and testing of optoelectronic devices was supported by the US Department of Energy ‘Light–Material Interactions in Energy Conversion’ Energy Frontier Research Center Award #DE-SC0001293, design of optoelectronic devices was supported by the US Department of Energy ‘Center for Energy Nanoscience’ Energy Frontier Research Center Award #DE-SC0001013, and optimization of the MOCVD reactor was supported by NSF Award #0749028. E.C.N. would like to thank the Beckman Institute for a Doctoral Fellowship.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Beckman Institute, and Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA

    Erik C. Nelson, Simon N. Dunham, John A. Rogers & Paul V. Braun

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA

    Neville L. Dias, Kevin P. Bassett, Varun Verma, James J. Coleman & Xiuling Li

  3. Graduate School of Energy Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan

    Masao Miyake

  4. Department of Physics, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA

    Pierre Wiltzius

Authors
  1. Erik C. Nelson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Neville L. Dias
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Kevin P. Bassett
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Simon N. Dunham
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Varun Verma
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Masao Miyake
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Pierre Wiltzius
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. John A. Rogers
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. James J. Coleman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  10. Xiuling Li
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  11. Paul V. Braun
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

E.C.N., V.V., N.L.D., P.V.B. and J.J.C. conceived the initial approach. E.C.N., V.V., N.L.D. and K.P.B. performed the MOCVD growth and evaluated MOCVD data along with J.J.C. and X.L.; remaining data was evaluated by all authors. M.M. and P.W. fabricated the polymeric templates by means of interference lithography and performed conversion to alumina. S.N.D. and E.C.N. developed the device processing; E.C.N. fabricated all devices (with N.L.D. and S.N.D. contributing) and performed all sample characterization and finite element modelling. E.C.N. and P.V.B. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paul V. Braun.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Information (PDF 794 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Nelson, E., Dias, N., Bassett, K. et al. Epitaxial growth of three-dimensionally architectured optoelectronic devices. Nature Mater 10, 676–681 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3071

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3071

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing