- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine
Access Provided by Xinjiang University

Physical Review Applied

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access
  • Access by Xinjiang University

Piezoelectric Response to Coherent Longitudinal and Transverse Acoustic Phonons in a Semiconductor Schottky Diode

D. Srikanthreddy1, B. A. Glavin2, C. L. Poyser1,*, M. Henini1, D. Lehmann3, Cz. Jasiukiewicz4, A. V. Akimov1, and A. J. Kent1

  • 1School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom
  • 2V.E. Lashkaryov Institute of Semiconductor Physics, National Academy of Sciences, Kiev 03028, Ukraine
  • 3Institute for Theoretical Physics, TU Dresden, D-01062 Dresden, Germany
  • 4Faculty of Mathematics and Applied Physics, Rzeszów University of Technology, aleja Powstańców Warszawy 8, PL-35-959 Rzeszów, Poland

  • *Corresponding author. caroline.poyser@nottingham.ac.uk
PDF

Phys. Rev. Applied 7, 024014 – Published 13 February, 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.7.024014

Abstract

We study the generation of microwave electronic signals by pumping a (311) GaAs Schottky diode with compressive and shear acoustic phonons, generated by the femtosecond optical excitation of an Al film transducer and mode conversion at the Al-GaAs interface. They propagate through the substrate and arrive at the Schottky device on the opposite surface, where they induce a microwave electronic signal. The arrival time, the amplitude, and the polarity of the signals depend on the phonon mode. A theoretical analysis is made of the polarity of the experimental signals. This analysis includes the piezoelectric and deformation potential mechanisms of electron-phonon interaction in a Schottky contact and shows that the piezoelectric mechanism is dominant for both transverse and longitudinal modes with frequencies below 250 and 70 GHz, respectively.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (27)

  1. Z. L. Wang and J. Song, Piezoelectric nanogenerators based on zinc oxide nanowire arrays, Science 312, 242 (2006).
  2. J. H. Stotz, R. Hey, P. V. Santos, and K. H. Ploog, Coherent spin transport through dynamic quantum dots, Nat. Mater. 4, 585 (2005).
  3. M. T. Ong and E. J. Reed, Engineered piezoelectricity in graphene, ACS Nano 6, 1387 (2012).
  4. C.-K. Sun, J.-C. Liang, and X.-Y. Yu, Coherent Acoustic Phonon Oscillations in Semiconductor Multiple Quantum Wells with Piezoelectric Fields, Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 179 (2000).
  5. D. M. Moss, A. V. Akimov, A. J. Kent, B. A. Glavin, M. J. Kappers, J. L. Hollander, M. A. Moram, and C. J. Humphreys, Coherent terahertz acoustic vibrations in polar and semipolar gallium nitride-based superlattices, Appl. Phys. Lett. 94, 011909 (2009).
  6. O. Matsuda, O. B. Wright, D. H. Hurley, V. E. Gusev, and K. Shimizu, Coherent Shear Phonon Generation and Detection with Ultrashort Optical Pulses, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 095501 (2004).
  7. O. Matsuda, O. B. Wright, D. H. Hurley, V. Gusev, and K. Shimizu, Coherent shear phonon generation and detection with picosecond laser acoustics, Phys. Rev. B 77, 224110 (2008).
  8. P. M. Walker, A. J. Kent, M. Henini, B. A. Glavin, V. A. Kochelap, and T. L. Linnik, Terahertz acoustic oscillations by stimulated phonon emission in an optically pumped superlattice, Phys. Rev. B 79, 245313 (2009).
  9. T. Pezeril, P. Ruello, S. Gougeon, N. Chigarev, D. Mounier, J.-M. Breteau, P. Picart, and V. Gusev, Generation and detection of plane coherent shear picosecond acoustic pulses by lasers: Experiment and theory, Phys. Rev. B 75, 174307 (2007).
  10. M. Lejman, G. Vaudel, I. C. Infante, P. Gemeiner, V. E. Gusev, B. Dkhil, and P. Ruello, Giant ultrafast photo-induced shear strain in ferroelectric BiFeO3, Nat. Commun. 5, 4301 (2014).
  11. Y.-C. Wen, T.-S. Ko, T.-C. Lu, H.-C. Kuo, J.-I. Chyi, and C.-K. Sun, Photogeneration of coherent shear phonons in orientated wurtzite semiconductors by piezoelectric coupling, Phys. Rev. B 80, 195201 (2009).
  12. G. D. Sanders and C. J. Stanton, Carrier dynamics and coherent acoustic phonons in nitride heterostructures, Phys. Rev. B 74, 205303 (2006).
  13. A. V. Akimov, A. V. Scherbakov, D. R. Yakovlev, C. T. Foxon, and M. Bayer, Ultrafast Band-Gap Shift Induced by a Strain Pulse in Semiconductor Heterostructures, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 037401 (2006).
  14. D. M. Moss, A. V. Akimov, B. A. Glavin, M. Henini, and A. J. Kent, Ultrafast Strain-Induced Current in a GaAs Schottky Diode, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 066602 (2011).
  15. X. Wang, J. Song, J. Liu, and Z. L. Wang, Direct-current nanogenerator driven by ultrasonic waves, Science 316, 102 (2007).
  16. C. Thomsen, H. T. Grahn, H. J. Maris, and J. Tauc, Surface generation and detection of phonons by picosecond light pulses, Phys. Rev. B 34, 4129 (1986).
  17. A. V. Scherbakov, M. Bombeck, J. V. Jäger, A. S. Salasyuk, T. L. Linnik, V. E. Gusev, D. R. Yakovlev, A. V. Akimov, and M. Bayer, Picosecond opto-acoustic interferometry and polarimetry in high-index GaAs, Opt. Express 21, 16473 (2013).
  18. B. A. Glavin, High-frequency acoustic wave detection in Schottky diodes: Theory consideration, arXiv:1607.04922.
  19. Z. V. Popović, J. Spitzer, T. Ruf, M. Cardona, R. Nötzel, and K. Ploog, Folded acoustic phonons in GaAs/AlAs corrugated superlattices grown along the [311] direction, Phys. Rev. B 48, 1659 (1993).
  20. E. Péronne and B. Perrin, Generation and detection of acoustic solitons in crystalline slabs by laser ultrasonics, Ultrasonics 44, e1203 (2006).
  21. A. V. Scherbakov, P. J. S. van Capel, A. V. Akimov, J. I. Dijkhuis, D. R. Yakovlev, T. Berstermann, and M. Bayer, Chirping of an Optical Transition by an Ultrafast Acoustic Soliton Train in a Semiconductor Quantum Well, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 057402 (2007).
  22. J. V. Jäger, A. V. Scherbakov, T. L. Linnik, D. R. Yakovlev, M. Wang, P. Wadley, V. Holy, S. A. Cavill, A. V. Akimov, A. W. Rushforth, and M. Bayer, Picosecond inverse magnetostriction in galfenol thin films, Appl. Phys. Lett. 103, 032409 (2013).
  23. W. Chen, H. J. Maris, Z. R. Wasilewski, and S.-I. Tamura, Attenuation and velocity of 56 GHz longitudinal phonons in gallium arsenide from 50 to 300 K, Philos. Mag. B 70, 687 (1994).
  24. K. Lee, M. S. Shur, T. J. Drummond, and H. Morkoq, Low field mobility of 2-d electron gas in modulation doped AlxGa1−xAs/GaAs layers, J. Appl. Phys. 54, 6432 (1983).
  25. P. J. van Hall, Ultrafast processes in Ag and Au: A Monte Carlo study, Phys. Rev. B 63, 104301 (2001).
  26. S. L. Heywood, B. A. Glavin, R. P. Beardsley, A. V. Akimov, M. W. Carr, J. Norman, P. C. Norton, B. Prime, N. Priestley, and A. J. Kent, Heterodyne mixing of millimetre electromagnetic waves and sub-THz sound in a semiconductor device, Sci. Rep. 6, 30396 (2016).
  27. Carrier Scattering in Metals and Semiconductors, Vol. 19, edited by V. F. Gantmakher and Y. B. Levinson (Elsevier, New York, 2012).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Applied 7, 024014– Published 13 February, 2017
  • Received 25 October 2016
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation