In this thesis, we successfully fabricated patterned semiconductor substrates, edge-emitting lasers with deeply etched distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs), two-dimensional photonic crystals (2DPCs) and two-dimensional photonic crystal microcavities (2DPC microcavities) by electron-beam lithography and inductively coupled plasma-reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE). We have obtained a minimum writing linewidth of 50nm and a maximum writing range of 500¡Ñ500µm2 in our electron-beam lithography system. Pitch arrays of 100nm pitch-diameter and 100nm separation have been formed on 100¡Ñ100µm2 semiconductor substrates. The etching depth of patterned Si substrates and patterned GaAs substrates are 50nm and 20nm, respectively. In the design of edge-emitting lasers with deeply etched DBRs, two and three pairs of DBRs were formed on the edge of laser cavity, respectively. To obtain high reflectance at wavelength (£f) = 960nm, 209nm mirror width and 240nm or 720nm air gap were fabricated. In the design of 2DPCs, a triangular array of air columns was adopted. The lattice constant (A) and column radius (R) are 742nm and 327nm, respectively. It has a band gap for TE modes corresponding to wavelength range in 936.45nm~968.85nm. We placed single defect in the 2DPCs to form 2DPC microcavities. In addition, we simulated the photonic band structure of a seven-defect 2DPC microcavity with A = 224nm and R = 56nm. We obtained a monopole defect mode at £f = 959.86nm. To measure 2DPCs and 2DPC microcavities, we have set up a micro-photoluminescence (Micro-PL) spectrum measurement system. We observed the Micro-PL intensity of the 2DPC microcavity is 4.5 times larger than 2DPCs at £f = 960nm in the same pumping power. The 2DPC microcavities show a lasing performance under optical pumping. The threshold power of 2DPC microcavities is 5.13mW~6.81mW at room temperature and decreases to 1.4mW~3.13mW at 15¢J.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Canterbury, 2008. / Typescript (photocopy). "September 2008." Eighteen folded leaves of ill. in pocket. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-115).

Many advances in technology ranging from biology and medicine through engineering and computer science to fundamental physics and chemistry depend upon the capability to control the fabrication of materials and devices at the submicron scale. Quantum mechanical effects become increasingly important to atomic and molecular interactions as the distances between neighbors decrease. These effects will provide materials and device designers with additional flexibility to establish properties of the designers choice, but the cost of this additional flexibility must be paid in the complexity of nonlinearities entering the interactions and the design process. The work presented here has provided several early results on three such interactions among closely-spaced submicron material structures: 1) the properties of superconductivity have been studied, 2) the properties of ferromagnetism have been studied, and 3) the interactions between superconductivity and ferromagnetism have been studied. Since our work was published, there has been considerable interest in all three of these wide-open areas and hundreds or thousands of additional results are now in the literature. We have used standard methods from the semiconductor industry as well as innovative methods to fabricate micron and submicron devices for observation. Standard optical lithography and standard electron beam lithography have been implemented to shape micron and submicron structures, respectively. Additionally, a laser interferometric lithography method has been invented and used to shape submicron structures. The materials used were vanadium, niobium, nickel, and/or permalloy. We have utilized SQUID magnetometry and Hall effect magnetometry to observe the properties of superconductor structures and superconductorferromagnetic mixed systems. We have used SQUID magnetometry and ferromagnetic resonance to observe the physical properties of ferromagnetic structures and the interactions between adjacent structures. Using these materials and methods we have discovered an unusual paramagnetic Meissner effect in thin Nb films that exists at igh-applied magnetic fields. We have discovered fluxoid matching anomalies at low sample temperature. And we have discovered interactions between electron exchange and magnetic dipole forces. Additionally, we have found clear evidence to support several past hypotheses advanced by other authors.

Pressure sensitive adhesive surfaces are often inspired by nature. Miming the toe-surface of gecko, engineered surfaces made of thousands of micro-pillars show promising adhesive properties. This surfaces, covered with cylindrical pillars arranged into a pattern have adhesive properties greatly dependent on the geometrical characteristics. In this thesis, have been studied successively two models of micro-patterned surfaces, one two-dimensional, the other in three-dimensional using a FEM tool. Varying geometry parameters, has been determined optimal geometries to improve adhesive strength on these biomimetic, micropatterned surfaces. This study concludes to the non-adaptability of one-level scale micropatterned surface to large area of adhesion, to the strong advantage from the point of adhesion per contact area for high aspect ratio at each level of the geometry and study the opportunity of hierarchical structures. Some further suggestions of improvements to adhesion properties are discussed in the final chapter.

The effect of surface roughness on jet impingement heat transfer was investigated in this research. A numerical analysis was conducted for free surface slot jet impinging normally onto a heated plate. Six different geometries and three different plate materials were investigated. The cooling fluid used for the analysis was water, and the flow was laminar with a range of Reynolds number (Re) from 500 to 1000. Temperature distribution, local and average heat transfer coefficient, and local and average Nusselt number were presented for each case. The steady state heat transfer results show that the increase in Reynolds number (Re) increases the local heat transfer coefficient and the local Nusselt number. Impinging the jet nozzle directly onto a step has a better heat transfer enhancement than impinging the jet nozzle in between steps. Materials with low thermal conductivity exhibit large variation in temperature along the solid-fluid interface. The variations of the interface temperature become smaller between all cases when applying the isothermal boundary condition. The transient heat transfer results show that the temperature of the interface increases with time until steady state condition is met. Materials with high thermal diffusivity reach the steady state condition with less time. The increase in surface roughness increases the time required to reach the steady state condition. The highest rates of heat transfer were found at locations where no fluid recirculation occurs. It takes less time to reach steady state condition when applying the isothermal boundary condition at the bottom surface of the plate.

Gas source molecular beam epitaxy (GSMBE) has been used to grow InGaAs/lnP epitaxial layers in selected areas defined by SiO2-masked InP substrates, with the goal of obtaining controlled in-plane variations in the bandgap of the InGaAs wells. The ability to alter the bandgap of the semiconductor spatially over the surface in one growth procedure is desirable for integrating laser, waveguide and detector devices. To form the masked substrates, stripes (ranging in width from 2 pm to 50 pm) were opened up in SiO2 by standard photolithography. The crystal growths were carried out at various substrate temperatures (ranging from 460 °C to 510 °C) and arsenic fluxes (V/lll ratios ranging from 1.2 to 3.4). The properties of the epitaxial layers were investigated by using such analytical techniques as photoluminescence, electroluminescence and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Photoluminescence measurements performed on waveguide stripes of decreasing width reveal an increasing red-shift of the e1-hh1 transition in InGaAs wells. The maximum red-shift occurred when growing at a high substrate temperature and a low arsenic flux. For example, a decrease in slit width from 50 pm to 10 pm resulted in a 25 meV shift of the photoluminescence peak. From cross-sectional TEM measurements, the wavelength shift observed can be attributed primarily to an increase in thickness of the InGaAs well, due to incorporation of additional indium and gallium migrating from the material on the masked regions. The interfaces in the centre of the stripe region are defect free; however, stacking faults and thickness variations are evident 1-2 pm from the edges. These results are confirmed by scanning photoluminescence, in which the maximum intensity occurs at the centre of the stripe and decreases to zero at the edges. Mapping of the peak wavelength across the stripe reveals a diffusion profile, with the edges being additionally red shifted by 10 nm. Reactive ion etching of the edge and the polycrystalline material results in a much improved spectral photoluminescence scan, in both increased intensity of the bandgap peak and elimination of lower energy peaks assumed to be correlated with edge effects. Finally, a stripe contact light emitting device, with a single 50 A quantum well InGaAs/lnP structure, was fabricated and electrically pumped. The device exhibited spectral peak wavelength shifts between narrow stripes (10 pm) and wide stripes (50 pm) of 22 nm, similar to the value observed by photoluminescence studies. / Thesis / Master of Engineering (ME)

The fabrication of Bit Patterned Media has become highly developed, with samples fabricated of over 1.5 Tb/in2. However, writing BPM presents significant challenges and for a system to be developed studies must be made into writing. This work has investigated a number of effects on the writing of Bit Pattterned Media (BPM). Magnetostatic interactions between islands have been used to investigate the effect of patterns of magnetisation on the write-window of a BPM system. A method of acquiring a distribution of patterns was determined and used to vary the probability of a target island switching. This showed that magnetostatic interactions between islands could be modelled as a variation in the anisotropy field. The relationship between island parameter distributions, the write-window and error rates was also explored. The effect of non-Gaussian distributions on the error in a BPM system was studied. It was concluded that tails of island parameter distributions have a significant effect on errors occurring in the write process of a BPM system. Therefore an accurate distribution of island parameters must be known and the necessary accuracy of such a distribution was established. Furthermore a model of BPM writing where the shape of the head field is approximated from the value at the maximum head field gradient will not account for switching in the tail of a real head field. This led onto a study of the ideal write point in BPM. In conventional recording theory the medium is designed to switch when the applied head field is at the position of its maximum gradient, which produces sharp transitions between magnetisation regions. A natural assumption in BPM is that the system could be optimised by setting the island switching field in a similar manner. This strategy of optimisation was investigated to see what gives the minimum error, or maximum write-window. It was concluded that optimisation could not be solely based on the maximum head field gradient, furthermore assuming the shape of the head field from this point will not produce an accurate estimation of the error in a BPM system.

Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.) / This research addressed the design and fabrication of nano-patterned sapphire substrates (NPSS) as well as the growth by molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) on such substrates of AlGaN and InGaN multiple quantum wells (MQWs). In recent years a number of LED manufacturers are developing nitride LED devices emitting in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum on micron-patterned sapphire substrate (MPSS). These devices are reported to have lower threading dislocation densities, resulting in improvement of the LED internal quantum efficiency (IQE). Furthermore, the LED devices fabricated on MPSS were also found to have improved light extraction efficiency (LEE), due to light scattering by the patterned substrate. My research focuses on the development of nano-patterned sapphire substrate aiming to improve the performance of LEDs grown by MBE and emitting at the deep ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. In order to optimize the nano-patterning of the sapphire substrates for maximum light-extraction, the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) simulation method was employed. The LEE enhancement was calculated as a function of the diameter, height and perion of the pattern. The calculations were performed only at a single wavelength, corresponding to the maximum of the emitted LED spectrum, which was taken to be 280 nm. These calculations have shown that the best sapphire substrate patterning strategy for this wavelength is the cone shape pattern in hexagonal array structure. Based on limited number of calculations I found that the optimum period, diameter and height of this cone shaped pattern are 400nm 375nm and 375nm respectively. Experimentally, nano patterned substrates were fabricated through natural and nano-imprint lithography. In natural lithography the first step for the definition of the nano-pattern consists of coating the sapphire substrate with photoresist (PMMA) followed by depositing a monolayer of polystyrene nanospheres, 400nm in diameter, using the Langmuir–Blodgett method. These spheres assemble on the substrate and form a closed packed hexagonal array pattern. Following this step the size of the spheres was slightly reduced using reactive-ion etching (RIE) in oxygen plasma. This was followed by the deposition a chromium film, lift-off to remove the polystyrene spheres and RIE to remove the PMMA from the footprints of the spheres. The substrate was then coated with a nickel or chromium films followed by another lift-off which defines the final mask for the formation of cone shaped features by RIE in a CHF3 plasma. An alternative method for pattern definition was the nanoimprint lithography; the stamp for this method (2 mm2 in size) was formed on Silicon substrate using e-beam lithography. NPSS with high quality pillar shape was also fabricated by this method, however, this method can produce only small size patterns. AlGaN films and GaN/InGaN MQWs were deposited on the NPSS by MBE, and characterized by Scanning electron microscopy and photoluminescence and cathodoluminescence measurements. The cathodoluminescence and photoluminescence spectra show that films grown on NPSS has much stronger luminescence than the films grown on flat sapphire substrate, consistent with enhanced light extraction efficiency.

No description available.

Molecular assemblies capable of harvesting light and using the absorbed energy have attracted great interest in recent years because of their applicability in such domains as light emitting diodes, fluorescent labelling of biological molecules, and photonic devices. Nature has also developed in plants and photosynthetic bacteria several examples of photonic nanostructures which guide light over small distances and harvest light energy, using resonance energy transfer (RET). For some time, researchers have tried to mimic the spatial arrangements of high energy transfer efficiency found in Nature. Recent progress in the application, creation and manipulation of individual or small groups of molecules are opening new perspectives for further developments in this field. These recent advances are commonly considered to lie at the root of what is being called "Nanotechnology". Although the definitions of nanotechnology are diverse, it is commonly admitted that this new domain of Science draws ideas and concepts from disciplines including engineering, physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and computer science. The central dogma of the “bottom up” version of nanotechnology is the notion of self-assembly, which is the spontaneous assembly of materials into predetermined ordered structures or complexes. Presented here is an example from a field of nanotechnology that utilizes self-assembly onto nano-patterned surfaces to generate nano-structured systems and devices. More precisely, in the present case we target photo-active devices based on Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET), taking inspiration from photosynthetic light harvesting systems, where concentric nanometric rings of chromophores funnel light energy to a reaction center. Here, we synthesize nano-patterned chromophore surfaces which are able to collect light energy over a large surface and funnel it in regions of ~100 nm size. Our results indicate that an efficient collection and transfer of light energy can be performed by properly nano-designed surfaces, which may have practical consequences for the fabrication of light-powered active nano-devices.