Reduction of lateral ion straggling for the fabrication of intermixed GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wires

Abstract To obtain steep lateral potentials for GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wires fabricated by the implantation induced intermixing technique it is important to reduce the lateral ion straggling during implantation to a minimum. In this paper we have realized wires varying implantation energy, distance from quantum well (QW) to the surface and ion species. The steepness of the resulting lateral potentials has been compared to values calculated by Monte Carlo simulations. It is shown that best results are obtained when the projected range R p slightly exceeds the distance between QW and the surface. According to theory, a very steep lateral potential is realized using a QW only 15 nm from the surface away. With increasing mass the steepness was not improved despite the from simulations expected decrease. Obviously the steepness was influenced by other properties of the implanted species.