Electrical and optical properties of self-assembled quantum dots

One of the main directions of contemporary semiconductor physics is the production and study of structures with a dimension less than two, i.e. quantum wires (QWi) and quantum dots (QDs), in order to realise novel devices that make use of low-dimensional confinement effects. One of the promising fabrication methods is to use self-organised three-dimensional (3D) structures, such as 3D coherent islands, which are often formed during the initial stage of heteroepitaxial growth in lattice-mismatched systems, Quantum dots, for example, are believed to provide a promising way for a new generation of optical light sources such as injection lasers. While quantum well structures are already widely used in optoelectronic devices, QWi and QDs appear to be much more difficult to fabricate for this purpose. Some of the electrical and optical properties of self-assembled QDs will be reported in this paper. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.