Growth and Characterization of MBE Parametric Variations Upon Polarization Independent Strained Films

This project was designed to comprehensively investigate the effects of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth variations upon tensile-strained films. Using two dimensional (2-D) structures, such as quantum wells of variable configurations, we worked to observe the electro-optical response of polarization independence. The latter had been studied for compressively strained systems. However, the proof of principle for the feasibility of tensile-strained single and double quantum wells, particularly in the GaAs as opposed to the InP material system, had been much less investigated by comparison. The significance of this project, from a Basic Energy Sciences perspective, has been in its contribution to the understanding of how MBE parameters and sample design effect the physics of strained materials which themselves have been tailored to react with polarization insensitivity. Fundamental issues of materials structure control, growth parameter modifications, and characterization methods were investigated. Both single and double quantum well systems were used with both symmetric and asymmetric well widths for the latter. In this work, we essentially investigated both the growth of and potential applications for quantum based structures that use tensile strain to induce polarization independence